


Like a Burning Violin

by Gemz0rz, purrslink



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bowtie, Clint doesn't cuddle... except for when he does., Clintasha - Freeform, F/M, Gen, In which Natasha is winning the antique-destroying competition... but Clint will never admit it, M/M, Mission Fic, Not Budapest but close enough, Snark and feelings are par for the course, Tasha is giving up granola bars after this one, phlint - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemz0rz/pseuds/Gemz0rz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/purrslink/pseuds/purrslink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clint calls in the early morning with mission parameters, Tasha is more than happy to go. But when they're sent back to Russia undercover, they are painfully reminded that they will never know each other perfectly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written first as a Tumblr storyline, this is the edited, spliced, shined-up second draft.
> 
> ...I should mention that we can't help but torture them. And I mean that in several ways. Stay tuned.

Natasha stalked back to her flat, running the last two miles even in her boots. By the time she got to her front door, her restless energy had dimmed somewhat, and she pulled sweaty hair off the back of her neck using the motion as an excuse to survey her surroundings before unlocking her door. Once inside, she locked it behind her in a decidedly more advanced fashion than the outside betrayed, and marched to the shower.

Tasha liked the shower. One way in, one way out. Tactically speaking, it was ideal.

What she didn’t like were delivery services, but seeing as she hadn’t been here for the last two weeks the fridge was empty. This was where staying at the tower had its benefits, but not tonight. Tonight she needed the yellow light of her own space and the tchotckes that littered the bookshelf, once just set dressing but she’d come to like them.

Settling for one of the pressed fruit-and-grain bars she usually carried on missions she promised herself a proper breakfast, assuming the world didn’t dissolve into chaos before then. Crawling into bed, she bypassed the book she sometimes read, the one tucked under the spare pillow, and turned out the light. It had been a long day.

*****

Clint wasn’t a fan of calling people. Calling was intrusive, loud, obnoxious, and for people who lived on the edge it was one more thing that demanded attention in a sea of obligations and responsibilities. It was hard to ignore a call, impossible even, when the fate of an op, a life, of lives could ride on you answering it.

It was why Clint tended to text when he needed something personally; a favor or a thing that could be classified as a want rather than a must have. Texting allowed the option to ignore. It was nice to have that luxury, sometimes, that illusion of normalcy.

Yet call he did, at 3am no less, because right now there was no room for illusion. Not when Clint was rubbing his own sleep from his eyes and staring at the folder that had been delivered no less than four and a half minutes ago.

Life went on, after all, no matter what time of the morning.

It was why the first buzz of the vibration of her phone on the bare bedside table woke her. Natasha's fingers moved unerringly beneath the shaded lamp beside it without looking at the screen, her attentions on defense should she need it. Only a handful of people had this number, and most of them knew better than to wake her for something trivial.

“Yes?”

“We’re heading out at 05:00.” It wasn’t the best of greetings but it was the honest one, and whether he was happy about it or not didn’t matter. It was what it was. “Good news, though, you ain’t gonna have to pay tariff on that Stoli Elit for a while. For the next three weeks, in fact.”

Four hours of sleep wasn’t great, but she’d had worse. And as far as news went, it wasn’t horrible. The sense of immediacy was fairly low — it was rare Natasha was allowed the luxury of hours to get where she needed to be — and even better, she knew the terrain, so to speak.

Not to mention the fact that alcohol tax wasn’t cheap.

The mission would be a little harder on Clint. He wasn’t a fan of the cold. It locked up his fingers and froze his nose and generally made life miserable without the advantage of mobility. Layers made it hard to pull the trigger. Even so, he rose and moved to pull out his uniform, eyeing the winter jacket hanging at the far end of the minimal closet.

“Packets are waitin’ on the plane. Hangar F-4.” There was a pause after that, before a grin tugged on Clint’s lips. “I’ll tell you what I’m wearin’ if you tell me what you are.”

Her answer was a fond curse in Russian that he knew Clint knew all too well.

“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

Sleep did nothing to impair her sense of sarcasm, or the amused curve of her lips in the dark, and she reached gamely for her boots. F-4 meant that she could swing by her quarters on the way. She’d only need her winter tactical suit; if S.H.I.E.L.D. was calling her in, they knew which weapons she’d want, and they’d already be in place on the Quin. Propping the tiny phone against her shoulder, she tightened the drawstring that slung low on her hips.

She refrained from asking who the handler was.

It should be Sitwell in command — but if Clint was taking the time to phone her, then it was just them, and if it was just them, then she knew who would rather be riding shotgun.

Professionally speaking, preferences could hurt her. Preferences led to habits, habits led to predictability that could be used against you. And so, on the rare occasions that preferences occurred, she kept them to herself. Even with Clint.

“Twenty says I’m in that hangar before you are.”

She was keyed up now, laser-focused; he was likely still in his boxers. It was an easy $20 from where she sat.

The quirk of his lips graduated to a full blown grin at that. Tasha was Tasha, no matter the time of day or condition of mind, and if there was one thing Clint could appreciate the most about her it was the ability to quip back with a speed and intensity few possessed. She was the perfect woman, in more ways than one and in more instances than should ever be necessary.

“Now why would I go and take your money like that?” Even if he did move faster now, unzipping and zipping. If she was betting she was already ahead of him. Then again, that wasn’t necessarily an unusual arrangement. “Too easy, Tasha, I’d feel bad.”

Yet he was taking it anyway. Go figure.

“See youat the hangar.” With that he hung up, tucking his phone into a pocket with the intents of being on it when he was waiting at the hangar.

Naturally, he was the one finally stepping onto carefully marked pavement, the cause of his tardiness perched on his head. She was already waiting, of course, just like he already had twenty in hand which he handed over silently.

Off her look he shrugged. “You got lucky. This once.” Though they both knew that it wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last, bill to change hands.

She took it with a single eyebrow that barely arched, a look that seemed to say 'What did you think I was wearing?' Two precise fingers tucked the bill down the front of her basic black crewneck, the same thing she’d slept in every night since she’d left the Red Room.

“I don’t believe in luck,” is what she actually said, more truth than backtalk, and with that the playfulness passed, leading them directly into go mode.

She ducked into the jet, triple checking that her weapons of choice were present and accounted for, as well as ample ammunition rounds. Shrugging, she clipped on her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued earpiece, meeting nothing but radio silence for now.

Even as he brushed past her, his eyes glanced toward the seats. Back to business. “So what’s so important that Fury’s got us up at the ass crack of dawn?”

“You read the same dossier I did.” Fluidly, she traded her sweatpants for her Widow suit without blinking an eye — the hangar was empty save Clint, and he’d seen it all before. She wasn’t a modest woman; and he knew that her body told the least of her secrets. If she was a different person, she might’ve said she loved him for that. As it was, she had a complicated view of that subject, and was just thankful for the ease of understanding between them.

Straightening the leg seams before reaching to draw up the back zipper in a way that should have been impossible, she nodded at the packet of coordinates in the passenger seat. “Russia. Strictly intel gather only, but by any covert means necessary.”

Covert meant that brute force was a last resort, and another nod of her head gestured toward some of their favourite disguises, each marked and hung in its own garment bag. Covert wasn’t a problem; undercover was very nearly what they did best, albeit she better than him sometimes.

There hadn't even been a bat of an eye spared for her from Clint's end as she changed, and instead he had moved to grab the dossier from the seat, sighing as he flipped through the papers. They weren’t any more elaborate than the ones he’d stumbled through already; he’d read it more in-depth once they got started.

“Three weeks to get what we can on this Department X.” She met his eyes then. They were good at this, and more specifically good together. This wasn’t aliens, or Council politics. This was something they could handle, and handle well.

“Department X, huh? Almost sounds mutant.” But that was really as far as that conjecture could go until they were knees deep in the op. “You ever wonder why it’s always X? Would think Y and Z are gettin’ pretty jealous at all the attention.”

“They named it that to spare you the big words.” It wasn’t cruel, but a familiar tease between them. Her fingers danced in a short sequence over the keypad, muscle memory tapping in the code to open the hangar, and they were flooded with the flare of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s external lighting, brighter for the surrounding darkness.

Because it was Clint, she didn’t try to hide the upward tilt of her lips. He glanced over to meet her eyes and wasn’t shy about the amused grin at the curves of his mouth. Undercover was Tasha’s thing in the way long distance sniping was his. Fortunately, he’d been learning from said best for a while now.

There wasn’t a better team for this, and S.H.I.E.L.D. knew it.

“Get in. I’m driving.”

“Fine, but I’m back-seating the entire way,” he countered. Annoying was his specialty after all, even if the threat was just that in this case, a threat. He needed time to go through the papers he’d only skimmed.

“I’ll give you backseating,” she purred darkly. Maybe she was sleep deprived, maybe she was thankful for the company, and maybe she was the tiniest bit giddy at having something on her plate that she was made for.

Clint seemed to share the mindset. With a last glance at his weapons - three quivers and enough ammo to make any party fun - he moved to secure the bay doors. Suit up and roll out, the Strike Team Delta way of life. He barely glanced over his shoulder as he punched in the lock codes.

“Been a while since Kamyshin. Think they still remember us?”

Natasha's jaw set as the Quin’s thrusters fired up, her attentions on the myriad of controls in front of her, speaking more to the dash than to him.

“I’ll be disappointed if they don’t.”

Professionally speaking, bloodlust was not a prized trait amongst operatives. But she had her grudges, and Russia was home to half of them. This was a covert mission, but there would be one day when that was not the case.

The smooth force of takeoff pressed her back into the moulded seat, and she went through programming settings with textbook precision, her mind switched completely to the mission. In this moment, competency had everything to do with how she could make it possible for them to be at their best: by making sure coordinates were stored so that they could trade sleep shifts.

It was the tone of Tasha’s voice that had him looking up, but the sight was a welcome, momentary distraction. The Quinjet controls were enough to make Clint’s heart beat just a bit faster. The sheer power in the yoke and the language of dials and meters was something that did what few other things could do: give Clint a solid foundation for belief in his own intelligence. Flying had been a staying force for him when he’d first joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and his license to fly (limited as it may be) would be something he’d be eternally grateful to the organization for.

Seeing Natasha at the controls, though? It was watching two things that had shaped and formed the wet clay of Clint’s younger self into the thing it was today. Both were beautiful and instrumental in ways that made his stomach twist just a bit. And both, together, were a lethal force of efficiency and competency.

“They’d be stupid to forget you,” he said, and while he knew the statement could be said for the both of them it was really Natasha who cut the more memorable figure of them both. For good reason. After all, Clint had never forgotten, had he?

Grudgingly he turned back to the papers and sighed. It was hard to concentrate on reading, of all things, before a mission like this. Before a venture into the heart of darkness where in lie the secrets of Natalia Romanoff. The bloodlust of earlier was contagious in the form of a restless spirit.

“Might as well grab the sleeping quarters while you can. I’m climbing up in five hours, whether you’re out of there or not.”

There was a fleeting temptation to wad up the paper he’d flipped to and throw it at the back of that familiar mess of red hair. But he needed it for now and there would be time later to return the tease.

But Clint was a consummate professional, or could be when he needed to, and right now the mission parameters required that focus. Still, he couldn’t help shooting a smirk at the back of Tasha’s head. “Could put her on autopilot and join me now.”

The things that rolled off Clint’s tongue sometimes. She suspected he didn’t always think before he spoke with her, which would have been irritating if it were Stark, or anyone else, even. But she knew too well what a luxury it was to be able to disable that filter with someone, to speak your mind. Flattered wasn’t the word… aware, maybe. It was a compliment, so she let him off easy, with a Look and a slim middle finger over her shoulder.

The look had him grinning, turning and throwing up his hands in mock retreat. “Fine, fine, be that way. See if I ever share the blankets again.”

He knew he would though. He always would. He’d always share with both members of _his_ team.

*****

When he rejoined her, Tasha had her knees tucked to her chest, autopilot engaged after a smooth climb in altitude. She looked unintentionally smaller that way, her red hair spilling loose over her shoulders as she pored over the briefing packet for the second time. She was pretty sure there were official suspicions that hadn’t been officially stated in the parameters; half a lifetime of reading between S.H.I.E.L.D.’s lines told her as much. Still, she’d know as much as anyone before they came back, so she wasn’t over worried about it.

“Caught up on my beauty sleep, your turn.” A teasing lilt crept into Clint's voice. “Pretty sure you could use it, what with that hair of yours out of place.”

“Doesn’t seem to have helped you,” she grumbled. Four hours of sleep was catching up with her, but she was more than sure that her strands hadn’t suffered. “Controls are all yours.”

She sighed, stretching like a cat in the sun before she stood, dropping the heavy folder into the empty passenger seat. “She’s on auto, cloaking set to engage…” She looked at the dash. “…in eleven minutes.” As soon as they crossed into international airspace. From there it was only another four hours to Vyborg, their rendezvous point on the Finnish border. After that, it would be ground travel southeast to the outer slums of Saint Petersburg.

She passed him in the cabin without touching, giving him his space just as she liked hers.

* * *

The quiet was as warm as the seat left behind and it was a comfort in some ways from the chaotic state of mind New York had been giving him. Things were simpler on missions in the sense that purpose was spelled out on paper. Components of the goal boiled down to just a few elements, and two of them Clint was very, very familiar with. It was nice to know where the extent of his control lay and exactly how, in theory, it was going to be applied.

Sometimes the simplicity in that was enough to settle the unease in himself.

It was that settling that allowed him to doze, carried away by the hum of engines and the solid knowledge of back up less than fifty feet away. The calm before the storm in a way, and it was those familiar feelings that made it so that, when Natasha came back, Clint was awake and alert. Ready for duty.

The flight computer had been pinging softly into his headset and though Tasha’s sudden tip-taps on the flooring caused a slight jump he was already focused back on the controls in front of him.

“Going down?” Her lips twisted in a wry smile; the nap had improved her mood, for sure. Her tactical suit was hidden beneath slacks and a turtleneck, tall boots laced up her shins; they had two blades and a firearm tucked into them. And since she knew Clint was the better pilot, not that she’d ever tell him as much unprompted, she melted into the passenger seat, reseating the near-invisible comm in her ear.

His eyes flicked sideways to take note of the new dress. He’d put on field slacks and a dark purple shirt moments before, though the thick winter jacket still lay crumpled in the plastic. Clint would need it shortly, but they still needed to hit their landing spot. It was a short window to trade off with their operative. Plane for car was a poor trade in Clint’s opinion, but poor was boon rather than a hindrance in this part of the world, particularly for the first part of this operation.

“Hitting rubber in ten. On final descent,” he said simply, glancing at the altimeter. “Repacked a few things, we should be set. Karoff’s waiting with the car, no incidences. Need to check in on frequency 334 in about two minutes, confirmation code is Sierra-Tango-Delta-Two.” It was missing a number but Clint said nothing about it.

“Got a ten minute window once we hit the ground then we’re on our way to the great and powerful Department X.” A pause followed it, then Clint smiled a smile that didn’t need to be seen to be heard. “Hope they don’t mind combat boots because I left my ruby slippers at home.”

Glancing sideways, there was a brief fracture of the shell of agent. A momentary pull away from the narrowed mindset that they both fell to and a re-emergence of the persona that was there when work wasn’t or hadn’t or was in the middle of calling away.

“Ready?”

The simple word wasn't a question of skill or competency or actual preparedness or even professionalism. It was a question that was acknowledging the fact that should this all go sideways, the knowledge that there was something more than what they are now once existed.

Though she missed the depth of his question, brief as the window was, his consideration was one of the very few that didn’t stifle her, and she nodded, fingers fiddling at her ear to find the channel.

“Ready.”

She usually was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Codenames and a six-cylinder engine.

Despite the whine of the engines, Natasha didn’t raise her voice on the comm as she checked in. The agent on the other end heard her as well as ever, snippets of fast-paced Russian flying between them for a moment before she nodded, uncaring that it was only Clint to see her, and moved to strap in her trusty 9mm, magazine clipping into the shiny handheld that was then tucked away into the hollow between her breasts. Cliché as it was, it was a place that very rarely met hands that weren’t her own, and even then it was on her own terms. Their vehicle would have a false floor to hide Clint’s gear, the garment bags and suitcases set dressing for their cover story.

When they landed, she was ready with both of their travel information, a false set of identities crafted especially for them, and she pointedly handed him his passport before opening her own.

“Tipper.” Someone in HR was going to pay for this.

With a roll of her eyes, she slipped the simple gold band onto her left hand — props that could be discarded as easily as they were affected — and stalked down the deplaning ramp with her effects, her Russian quick and low as she secured the keys to their new ride. Jingling them triumphantly at Clint for half a second before tossing her bags into the small make car.

Their window was indeed short. Fortunately Tasha’s Russian was fast, and Clint had his bags moved in long she neatly took the keys and papers. There was an internal pout at losing out on driving, but you didn’t argue with the lady who knew every dialect and every way to make you look like an ass. He still hadn’t forgotten the incident with the reindeer. _That_ had been an awkward sitrep.

She waited for him to duck into the passenger door before putting it in reverse, the subtle GPS in the dash already mapping their route to the slums. Which was when he opened his own passport.

“…Donner.” Someone in HR really thought they were funny.

He let the air settle between them as they pulled away from the air field. The first five minutes were crucial and he set his eyes to what they did best: watching. No cars pulled out behind them, though, and no people seemed to linger. For all intents and purposes the transfer had gone off without a hitch -- which meant comms were now silent until they reached the safe house.

It didn’t mean they couldn’t talk, though. “Well, so far no welcoming committee. Gotta say, prefer this welcome to the last time we came. I lose a lot less jackets that way.” After all, bullet-riddled wasn’t in fashion at the moment.

Natasha kept her eyes on the road, content in knowing that Clint had her back. His eyes were better than hers anyway; he’d catch it if they were being tailed. His unease ebbed eventually, and she found that she relaxed a little under his reply. It was more than him telling her the coast was clear, it’s the fact that she believed him.

With a glance over, he gave Tasha a brief smile before consulting the GPS. As he did, the weapons in his coat inner lining were taken out and rearranged. A knife under his slacks, a few spare explosive arrow heads under the lip of his combat boots, a pistol left in the inner lining as an extra cartridge found a home underneath underwear elastic. Cold against skin, but it would likely be warm enough soon.

It felt good to be armed.

“I keep tellin’ ya that if we’re going back to the old country, we should come in summer,” he said as he spared another glance out the window. Ice shone on the ground. Lovely. Though it was also less a statement on his dislike so much as it was an establishment of identity.

His Russian wasn’t as good, but it was more than passable if he said he was second generation. “At least we’re leaving for St. Petersburg tomorrow, ya?”

“Da.”

Being back in Russia — no longer “home” — always put Natasha in a weird mindset. Not bad, just… introspective. In New York, she was content among the sea of people and cars and pollution to not think about things too hard, but here, on the stretch of road that looked like all the stretches of road from her earliest years her mind found all the questions that seemed to be swept into the corners.

The only problem with this was that he could probably see them in her eyes. The sooner they got to the safehouse, the better, both tactically and for the sake of her sanity. They had plans to make, ground to cover, contacts to scope, and she knew that he liked to wait to do all of that until after he’d fit into his role for the mission.

Her toe pressed down marginally harder on the gas as the car sped along.

“What do you want to do in St. Petersburg, Donner?”

It’s not a real question, but a way to try and spark his vocabulary. She really should make him use it more often, keep it oiled so that in instances such as this it didn’t seem so far away, and she filed away a mental note to incorporate it into the days that they train together.

Besides, it was good practice to train herself not to laugh every time she used his codename.

There was a bit of a pause as he struggled to slip into the low, thick words. Russian always reminded him of oil. Heavy and dense with a tendency to coat the air in a pervasive veil of indifference. Still, there was a beauty to Russian that Clint suspected he associated with it only because of Natasha. He’d have little to love about it otherwise.

Finally he found the words and his mind clicked into the rest of the vocabulary that had been so hard won over the years. “I’d think the usual for us, Tipper.” He gave her a bit of a sardonic smirk. “Dinner, dancing, taking in the sights. I brought a suit just for the occasion.”

Honestly they’d be lucky to see anything outside of the sight of their scopes, but that was neither here nor there.

The car engine rattled a bit over a pothole as the scenery flew by. There wasn’t much to see that hadn’t been seen any other countless times they were here. The same ghosts lurked in the recesses and corners of places and Clint knew that the longer they were here the more they would rise to the surface.

Another glance to Natasha showed that perhaps a few had already begun to creep back into consciousness.

“Dancing,” she confirmed. If there was anything obligatory about this mission that came with a real sense of enjoyment, it was the fact that they would have to permeate the social scene of the surrounding environment — as lips were loosest after the day was done, and after a few vodkas — which likely meant dancing. She would never say as much, but then with Clint she knew she didn’t need to; he knew enough to read pleasure on the rare occasions she wore it.

Clearing his throat, he unfurled a map and bit the inside of his cheek. Unanswered questions had spent years on the tip of his tongue in regards to Tasha. Chances are they’d always stay there. He trusted Tasha with a lot of things, but that trust came with knowing that some answers weren’t so much a matter of trust as a matter of acknowledgement.

“We should bring back pastila.” It was better to keep things as they were. There would be time later to stir up old thoughts. Even if that simple statement was enough to bring up past memories as well.

Still, nothing said ‘thinking of you’ like sweets did, especially to the man who kept doughnuts in no less than three hiding places around his office.

Natasha's face was blank, but after a moment she consented verbally.

“...And pastila.”

She’d introduced him to it almost on accident on one of their earlier missions, but she never touched it. It wasn’t that she didn’t cave to the occasional sweet tooth, but more the fact that her tongue remembered things her consciousness didn’t. And the melt-away sweet, sharp with the tang of apples, was not something she wanted to remember.

They lapsed into silence after that, each remembering different shadows of things stuck into the far reaches of their mind.

*****

Cruising along at 80, Tasha was pleasantly surprised by whatever engine they’d replaced the factory model with. It kept up beautifully, helping to blur the sights outside the window before she could focus on them, and they reached the safehouse in no time.

It was dressed as a middle-class vacation home, no doubt having been secured years ago from what had once been a private residence. Pulling into the garage, she didn’t move from her seat until the retractable door had closed completely, throwing them into the greenish glow of the industrial light hanging from the ceiling.

Without a word, she vacated the car, immediately moving to unpack. She was comfortable in her knowledge of the culture here, knowing it made her more effective, but Russia left her with a need for space and air that it teased but didn’t fulfill.

Inside, it was a blur of safe, sequential motion, and it was obvious they were both grateful. Guns went into crevices and drawers, knives under beds, trip wire around the windows and doors they’d never use, menial code punched in to reactivate dormant alarms and deactivate the systems that kept the safe in safehouse. There was a failsafe for every situation and though Clint could think of a thousand more, did so, made the adjustments to prevent at least 750 of them, there was still a part of his thoughts that wandered into the quiet stillness of questions unanswered.

Still, though, the routine did wonders for wandering thoughts, and as the realities of recalled digits and carefully wound wire registered on calloused fingers, so did the mission mindset rise.

Natasha worked seemingly oblivious to the cold, though she nudged the heater up a little for Clint. When everything was systematically sorted, their weapons stored out of sight but close at hand, the security measures throughout the house double-checked and HQ informed of their wherabouts, she made her traditional bug sweep and deemed the place clean.

It was only then that she turned to her partner, trying to gauge how he felt about being back here. Memories could be stumbling blocks, she knew; the Red Room had been right about that.

“Dinner…?” was all she said, as Natasha knew when to pry and when to leave be. They had a list of locations their marks liked to visit, and it was as good a place to start as any.

"Dinner," he agreed, before remembering that dinner came with a suit.

Clint groaned and missed the amused look and triumphant tint that flashed through Natasha's eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should've gone with the escargot, Clint. Next time.
> 
> or
> 
> "Two worlds away, but home is sitting right here."

Natasha had learned fashion early on, but Clint didn't know a lot about suits. He did know that the one he had wasn’t anywhere near as fine as others he’d seen. It got the job done well enough, however, and it’d been taken in for his form; looking expensive was easier when things fit after all. Even if that fit was foreign and unwieldy for his drawing arm. There wouldn't be call for a bow tonight though. Instead, a shoulder holster, a knife, and another pistol cleverly tucked into the back of waistband would suffice.

When she stepped out, Natasha, as always, looked gorgeous. The smile that he couldn’t help said it all. Only a fool would deny that Natasha Romanoff was one of the world’s most beautiful women, and the ones that said so only did because they hadn't seen her. What killed was the fact that he knew Natasha wasn’t even trying that hard. It was a dress she’d worn once before, long, red, low cut, and she’d concealed a Beretta in a holster along her inner thigh. It wasn’t subtle, but she didn’t think anything of it beyond the fact that her cleavage could be a handy distraction tool; some men were so easy. Besides, here in the land of gold and jewels, she knew she wouldn’t be the most opulent by far tonight — in Russia, there was no such thing as overdressing.

Still, though, that dress and his suit was enough to have him taking the keys. Gentlemen drove in this social circle, because gentlemen were exactly that, if only to maintain appearance. They wouldn't be the only ones armed.

Clint’s Russian was stronger as he started the car, the brief flip through his phrase book having helped while waiting for Natasha’s magic to happen. “Korostav’s file said he takes the same table with his wife when they frequent. Order the same thing, made the same way, and dance to the same music requested specially.”

“Hmmm,” Natasha mused, thoughtlessly moving to smooth the silk down her form before she took the passenger’s seat so as to prevent wrinkles. “Means we’ll know if we’re wasting our time or not by the playlist.”

It was a better deal than they usually got.

“Good place to start, given Korostav’s connections to the KGB. His wife’s apparently quite the chemist herself. Well-known for some fusion agent.”

Tasha's false eyelashes just barely crowded the edges of her peripheral vision, and she turned her head just a fraction sideways to watch their surroundings carefully though the window as he filled her in. Memories or not, spatial awareness had saved her ass a couple hundred times before and she knew better to than ignore the layout of alleys and storied buildings.

The restaurant was starkly out of place, wealth and grandeur in the middle of what should have been a working-class village, but Natasha knew the residents would all be smart enough to look the other way. There were some forces you couldn’t fight, after all.

From Clint's point of view, it wasn't just the restaurant that was out of place; he didn't feel at home at all amongst the glitz and glamour. The circus had a different razzle dazzle to it that was more rhinestone fabulous than diamond glam. At Carson’s, Clint had known what the point of the show was: to make a living. Here, though, he was surrounded by people who were laughing but not laughing, touching jewels on their necks and wrists to proclaim riches instead of earn them.

As expected, they walked into a den of plush and crystal, ten different perfumes wafting on the air. Thankfully they had all been applied with the light hand that old money suggested.

Slipping the waiter a black AmEx card, courtesy S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha indicated a table on the upper level of the restaurant with a coquettish point of her finger. The waiter’s dark eyes took in the neckline of her dress, nodded once, and then proceeded to take her arm as he escorted her. Her resulting smile was only tight at the corners, and she settled demurely in her seat, waiting until the man had left to address Clint.

“French,” she muttered, looking down at the menu. Even with all the money in Russia at your fingertips, you couldn’t get real French food. She knew Parisian cuisine, and so did he -- there was a time they’d known it together. This was a pale facsimile of the real thing, and instead of looking at the menu any longer, she let her gaze linger out over the filling space, watching the crowd as nonchalantly as she could.

He sat next to her like the consummate professional, nodding coolly to the waiter and taking the menu with a flourish. He didn’t recognize anything on it. He rarely did, and what they’d be ordering would be mirror images of what the targets got. It was easier when those small details were taken care of already.

Instead, he stared out of his peripheral vision at the restaurant below. Four exits on the bottom floor, assuming there was one through the kitchen. Two on the top floor, three if you counted a second story jump through the large, decorative window. It wasn’t Clint’s first option for sure but it never hurt to at least have all the possibilities lined up. There were two staircases to the bottom floor and a few large pillars, all of which were options when it came to them. The place was wide open and offered few hiding places. But what it lacked in cover it made up for in escape points at least.

With the outs established he turned his eye to the floor. The orchestra was already playing, a piece he didn’t know and not one on the list. He’d listened to the set list three times on the plane ride over.

“Nice place,” he said, conversationally, more for the sake of those around them than for Tasha or himself. “The food looks excellent. It comes very highly recommended, after all.”

There was movement at the door, a sudden flurry from the maitre’d, and an elegant woman in more jewels than Clint had seen in a long, long while was escorted in by an older man. There was no doubt to the importance of the couple, if the waiters tripping over themselves to seat the two by the orchestra was any indication.

The conductor leaned in as the man approached, exchanging handshakes. A chef emerged from the back with the swing of kitchen doors. Hearty greetings in Russian.

Clint glanced at Natasha: found them. It was almost, suspiciously, too easy so far. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to freshen up, dear?” The bathrooms were on the first floor, after all, past the couple’s table. “I’ll order for us.”

And then, to keep up the cover, a teasing smile, “Not that you don’t look ravishing already.”

It was easier for Natasha to be in someone else’s skin than in her own, and in a twisted way it was almost like meditation for her there, playing out an imaginary life in the middle of a (Russian) French supper club. Her eyes flashed at Clint as he spoke, quickly reminded that he didn’t quite revel in this like she did. “Ravishing” was one of those ten-dollar words that meant nothing, but then neither did their imaginary lives, and she rose from the table gracefully, suddenly eager for space.

“I’ll be right back, _darling_.”

The sound of the clicking of her heels was lost among the chatter and music of the place, and with the slit that rose higher up her thigh than any bounds of decency dictated, it was easy to fake a fall. The quick path of color — like the red flash of a bullfighting cape — got her instantly noticed, and Korostav himself came to her aid.

It was a risky tactic. The man’s eyes began at her ankles, took his time with her legs, as well as the generous scoop of her neckline, and finally took in her face, smiling. Chalk one up for the alpha male mentality. His wife wasn’t pleased — she’d seen his appraisal of her — but it was clear that neither of them thought she was a threat. Which was a shame really, as she’d already planted a bug beneath the table as she used it to help herself up, and another beneath the collar of his suit jacket, which would spend the majority of the dinner session tucked away in the attended cloakroom, but would follow their mark after dinner, into the shadowy recesses of whatever luxury car he was driving, and beyond.

Clint played the part of sweet but clueless fiancé well, missing the fall with an artfully placed glance at the menu and a fuss or two with the Windsor-knotted tie. He knew his part well, the meek, slightly nervous tourist with the wife far above his own graces. It was a part not hard to fill when he felt uncomfortable in his own suit.

Tasha knew her part as well, though, and she pulled through with the quick, silent power that her code name could only hint at.

“Thank you,” she breathed low, the false lashes hiding the dangerous spark in her eyes.

“It’s my honour,” he returned, and his wife’s frown deepened.

With a nod of thanks, Tasha continued onto the powder room.

The hearing piece tucked far into his ear canal crackled as the waiter talked, advising distracted ears on what the house specialties were. A hand rubbing the back of Clint's neck adjusted the tech until the transmission was more small talk and less static. To everyone else, it looked like indecision.

“Two specialties, I think,” he said after a pause just long enough to be forgotten. “Red wine. The house favorite.” His smile was nothing special, but then again, it wasn’t supposed to be. Clint would pull out the charming one later.

“Very good, sir,” though the bored tone had crept back into the young server’s face. Clint was too practiced to smile at the write off he was given, but if there was a bit of a more protracted dip of his head no one would know why.

The chatter in his ear was nothing special. Clipped tones from Korostav’s wife indicating Natasha’s fall had most definitely not gone unnoticed. Clint could practically see the set jaw and stiff shoulders that would go with the tone. He almost felt story for Korostav himself, except for the flash of interest in the man’s eyes when Natasha passed by again. Hopefully Korostav had a shovel in the car with the way his wife’s lips firmed into a thin line.

And while the murmurs in his ear are useful enough, it was the nod he looked for when Tasha came appeared across the restaurant that had him nodding back. She crossed the room, the right amount of sway in her hips as to be noticeable but not commanding with her presence.

Natasha knew these things; she’d been trained well. Twice, which was more than most people could say.

Wrapping capable fingers around her water glass, she let its rim disguise her smile, a smile that told her partner: “We’re in.”

He could see the thrill in her eyes, in the way her movements were smooth and deliberate. Clint wondered sometimes what it was like to be able to coil your emotions so well all the time, without even snark to blow off the pressured steam inside.

If it wouldn’t break cover to speak in English, or even German, Clint would. Instead, he picked up small talk to cover the fact that their attentions were elsewhere, on the tight argument occurring in their ears. Clint had always been skilled at managing meaningless commentary and he wove a tale equal parts complaint and story about lost baggage and the audacity of airlines. Nothing that couldn’t be found in the files of disgruntled travelers everywhere. Natasha replied predictably, playing the part of a woman who knew her worth. It wasn’t so far off the truth, it was just that her worth tended to be measured in stealth and the direction of her moral compass other than her poise and stature.

The stream of Russian in her ear was like a lullaby without the tiring effect. These weren’t harsh tones — aside from the strained undercurrent of his meticulously-manicured wife, who still wasn’t over the fact of her husband’s wandering eye — and the memories they called up may not have been real, but neither were they oppressive. When the phrase they were waiting for echoed in the man’s heavy tone, Tasha’s gaze found Clint’s.

A date - next Saturday - and a place - Durchenko.

He'd heard it. Maybe he’d need the suit again after all.

“Dessert?”

Natasha knew he would be able to pick up on the disinterested note in her voice, and sure enough -- call it unease over lack of practice of late or a general aversion to the high life -- he was all too happy to agree. Since the bugs were planted, they had no real reason to stay, and in fact it might even be smarter for them to clear out in the name of spending as little time possible being scrutinised. Though it could very well come in handy that Korostav had taken notice of her tonight; providing they managed to find a way to finagle an invitation to next week’s party, they could infiltrate as guests instead of sneaking in and risking detection.

And though it was only a fleeting thought, she knew that Clint would be far less tense back at the safehouse. While his comfort was not the most important factor of this evening, and certainly not this entire trip, she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit protective of his mental health ever since Manhattan.

“I think I’ve had my fill,” he replied smoothly, and there was no flicker of surprise on her face as he signaled for the check as easily as he covered the fact that his croquettes were still relatively untouched.

Paris didn't really belong in Russia anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miles to go before they sleep.

The car hummed along, on the way home, the night warming up a bit though whether that was a fluke or not would remain to be seen. It was, however, the part of the night where she left behind Tipper and remembered Natasha, except she used the term “remember” loosely. Sometimes she thought she was a set of skills more than she was a fully realized person, though to be fair, Clint was the one person who could halfway convince her otherwise.

“Durchenko,” Clint finally said, a few miles down the road, when the buzzing in their ears continued to report clinking silverware and mentions of dessert being ordered. “Sounds like a place, or a name.” He glanced at Tasha for confirmation. “Not sure I saw anything in the reports about either.”

Not that the reports had been complete by any stretch of the means. That would be too easy for them after all.

“Name,” she replied, sure of herself. “Not rare, but not too common. We can let HQ do the footwork for us.” She switched frequencies briefly, filling the agent on the other end in on what they’d learned, and was promised a report by morning on what they could dig up. Satisfied, she switched back to the low-level dinner chatter, fishing the earring hooks from her ears.

“Might be useful to go pokin’ around Korostav’s workplace. Gotta be some kind of written invitation or somethin’. You know these people,” he said with a snort, never classifying Tasha in with them so much as stating an expertise. “Gotta be somethin’ formal they can wave under people’s faces.”

“I think I’m up for a little distraction.” It was an understatement; she had a full range of disguises with her. “I’ll keep the front desk occupied if you want to do the sneaking.”

There was a hint of a smirk on her red lips; Clint always wanted to do the sneaking if he had a choice, because while his dinner and dancing skills stunk, his breaking and entering skills were far beyond up to par. As Clint said, it was nice to have a hobby that could easily be kept up on base.

Clint had to smile a bit at the thought of Natasha’s distractions, though. Contrary to popular belief, not all of Tasha’s disguises were long dresses with even longer slits. He had seen her as a babushka, a businesswoman, a homeless woman, and once, memorably, a rather effeminate man. Natasha’s skills in undercover were legendary for the sheer fact that her skill in disguises stemmed from her ability to change the core of her personality to fit the situation as needed. It was something Clint found he could never fully achieve.

Yet Clint was loathe to describe his own shortcomings in the area as having too much heart. It was an ill choice of words considering the connotations it made about others.

Natasha had heart, he’d seen it before, and while their job demanded that their own moral compass sometimes bend and shift there were some things that would never change in regards to their own shifting gradients of black and white. He’d reminded Tasha of that fact once, years ago, when staring down the barrel of her gun with the very real possibility of it all coming down to him or her. Things had worked out then.

The only difference was that now Clint just wasn’t naïve enough anymore to believe that the world would never come down to ‘or’ between them again.

Still, right now it was him _and_ her and he smiled at the promise of sneaking. “Think I could manage that.”

They lapsed into silence after that and when Tasha’s breath came just a tad easier Clint’s own shoulders untensed. They reached the safehouse, again pulling into the garage which locked securely from the inside, and before she even thought about leaving her disguise behind, she made a sweep for bugs or any other tamperings to their systems. It was one of the few professional habits she allowed herself and it only took her about 90 seconds to clear a room.

Finding nothing, she gave Clint the all clear, the tips of her fingers centering on the tense muscles between his shoulder blades. Touch was not a language Natasha spoke with very many people, and tonight she let it do the talking for her. Without a word she retreated to let him decompress as she went to change out of her finery.

The touch was all Clint needed to understand. Tasha’s touches were rare, after all, and though once they had been more forthcoming, the fact that she chose such a method now of communication was telling of sentiment generally unspoken.

He said nothing about it, choosing not to call attention to the touch and instead giving her a small smile before moving to change. The suit was left on the bed, the floor avoided only by the knowledge that such an act would have earned him a disappointed remark from Coulson. With slacks and warmer clothing regained and easy mobility returned, the thought of flopping onto the bed for just a moment was broken with the crackle in his ear of another channel.

Work didn’t sleep after all; there would be time later.

Frowning a bit at the information, Clint moved back into the living room. A granola bar and bottle of water were in his hand and crackle in his ear long since gone before he glanced to Natasha. “Durchenko’s a name; possible associate, though intelligence hasn’t been able to find a solid link. There’s a home address up on the north-east side of town; pretty remote for here.”

Which wasn’t too unusual. The rich tended to avoid the slums like cats and loud noises. Still, no other information had been offered which meant there hadn’t been any to give. “Said he’s got a government job in shipping and he’s pretty junior rank.” Which was the non sequitur, considering the pay rate and the size of property. “They’re emailing us what they’ve got.”

“On it.”

Natasha plugged in the WiFi dongle — standard issue cloaked signal — and flipped open the tiny netbook. She was still quiet, the inner workings of her mind turning over each of Korostav’s mannerisms, each of his obvious likes. She could play him, that much was certain. The idea of his fidelity to his wife was a joke; that might end up being the easiest way in, but she didn’t voice her thoughts.

“Well, look at that.”

The email didn’t contain any more information on Durchenko, certainly nothing helpful beyond what they already knew — that something was being covered up — but it did include the blueprints of Korostav’s work building. The good news was that the blueprints were accompanied by the purchase histories of the several companies who worked on the place. Now they knew what kind of locks they were dealing with and could pack accordingly. The bad news is that it was built in a U-shape, and if things went lopsided, they wouldn’t be in a strong defensive position. Not to mention they’d compromise the rest of the mission, but they could mourn that when they got out of there.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been the first mission to go south, and they’d fought their way out of worse. This was Clint. It wasn’t that she didn’t worry, it’s that there was no one else in the world she trusted to cover her six.

She downed a glass of water as she waited for the blueprints to send to each of their phones, and neatly pulled the Wifi shortly after. It was highly improbable, but not impossible, that it could be traced. After all, she’d hacked it once upon a time.

Pouring another glass of water but not touching it, she set the laptop back into its armoured case and set the lock. It was clean, with nothing besides what they’d just pulled on the hard drive… but better safe than sorry.

“You should get some rest,” she said in Russian without looking back at him. “There’s work tomorrow.”

Clint made a non-committal grunt at the suggestion. They did have work tomorrow but there would always be work tomorrow. He could function on a few hours of sleep if need be and with missions like this the status was almost always at ‘need be.’

Instead he sat across from Natasha and crunched through ‘dinner’ as he swept through the blueprints on his phone. Yet for the purported dangerousness of this mission the break-in was looking to be a fairly simple job. More simple than decoding the enigma that sat across from Clint.

She made no move to go herself, sipping the water instead. Russia always made her question who she was, what was left after she’d been remade so many times, and it felt like maybe if she stayed awake a little longer, she might know. As full of pain and triumph as it was, she knew the country still held onto her secrets, that they existed somehow, if only in the air. In the meantime, she was like sand that would never be washed flat, forever holding the imprint of where others had walked.

Clint knew as he watched her that there was something about Russia that brought out the contemplative side of Natasha. The distracted curl of her fingers, the statue still posture, none of it was particularly out of the ordinary until you got to the eyes. Her eyes were fixated on a point, as if the wall would suddenly bring forth answers in the curve of ugly floral wallpaper.

There were parts missing to Natasha Romanoff, even Clint knew that. It was a sad truth of the job that you lost parts of yourself every time the job broke you. And Natasha had been in the business long before he had. Alone she had laid a trail of herself from one side of Russia to the other, the long way around. It was impossible to know where and when things had become lost anymore, and even Clint wondered if he could ever pinpoint where the slivers of his own life had fallen. But if the missing, jagged pieces truly lay in Russia he didn’t know. There was no easy way to know. Even if he really did wish that, for once, the answers would appear out of the faded mint paper on the wall.

Flipping his phone shut Clint stood, crumbs bouncing onto the floor with a haphazard brush of his hand. There was nothing to say about those pieces. Chances are there never would be anything to say. It was unspoken between them that one didn’t initiate talk about the cracks in the walls. When it was time, they would be addressed.

“You're right, should probably catch some sleep,” was all he said instead. There were a thousand ways to return the sentiment, from get some sleep to don’t worry about it. Instead, he chose, “Wouldn’t hurt to check out your room before we leave.” It didn’t come out quite as professional as he meant it, but the fact that he was headed for his own room on the other side of the small space spoke for the miscommunication.

Nastasha knew what he meant. She usually did. Still it was easier to tease him about the secondary meaning than it was to acknowledge that something was actually wrong.

“Don’t hold your breath, Hawkeye.”

Her voice was low and there was no animosity in her tone, and belatedly she knew that she never had to acknowledge anything; the fact that she was not whole was a universal truth not contingent on circumstance. In the look he tossed back to her, something a bit more concerned and questioning as she sat trying to make peace with the holes in her life, he let the moment linger then quietly closed his room door behind him. Vaguely, she wondered if what she was seeing was pity.

As his door closed, she breathed out, agitated. The one person on earth she could never read like she wanted was Clint Barton, and so she might never know if pity was what it was, but for his sake she hoped to hell she was wrong.

The slight flare of anger she felt, both at her own inability and at the idea that she might’ve been right, spurred her into motion, and she snatched the broom from the corner without thinking. She held it like a weapon, and though her motions as she swept up the crumbs were not the smooth motions of a normal person, it got the job done. Crumbs cascaded into the rubbish bin as she tipped the pan, and all of a sudden the previous 36 hours caught up with her. She crept down the hall, closing her door as soundlessly as possible so as to not give him the satisfaction of knowing she’d turned in, and crawled into bed. When she fell asleep, it was in her favorite shirt, fingers curled around the 9mm beneath the opposite pillow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl walks into a bar and says, "I'd like to buy a piano."

Breaking in wasn’t the hard part. People tended not to be around on weekends and the guards on the building were light. After all, government work meant not wanting to appear too suspicious, even if Russia had practically defined the term since its creation. The morning hours had been well spent in the sense that the minutes were timed perfectly for Clint to move past the shifting guard and into the inner gates of the compound.

Reaching up he tapped the comm unit twice to show he’d made it through. Radio silence on his end was crucial until inside, and they’d set the signals in place long before this op. All that was left was the deed itself.

There was the sound of voices that had Clint pausing and he frowned. Angry arguing in a dialect he wasn’t entirely familiar with. He knew Korostav’s voice, thick and slow, but the man he was arguing with in the entrance took a moment to place. Babym. Korostav’s Ukranian assistant who was, at that moment, looking rather annoyed and upset over something. He caught the words ‘shipping’ and ‘delay’ but languages weren’t his specialty.

Clint knew Natasha had likely seen already, or at least heard through his mic, so with another series of taps to indicate moving on he left the two. Tasha would handle it.

For now, he found the access door, slid in the lock pick, and in two minutes flat was inside before the security camera could pan back around.

*****

“Goddamnit!”

The low curse was in English as she heard Korostav’s voice over the comm. What kind of kingpin haunted his own cover shop? She had to hand it to him — an international shipping depot was a more clever cover than most. It would certainly make combing the backlogs hell.

For a split second, Tasha regretted her decision not to come in full disguise, her reason being that for now it would only benefit the crowd from the supper club, none of whom were likely to have middle-class jobs at a mailing station. But it was too late for regret, and now she would just have to let her acting ability trump whatever suspicions he might have over seeing her here. She tapped the same signal back to Clint, their sign for “go,” and strode to the reception desk, her voice just loud enough to carry. Korostav glanced over as she knew he would, out of annoyance, and then recognised her. His expression was surprised, then doubtful, and then melting into a careful mask of goodwill, he came immediately to her side.

“Is there something I can help you with, Mrs…?”

“Buell. Tipper, please.” Her smile was beatific as she reached to shake his hand. “I was hoping to get a quote on a shipping expenditure?”

“And what would you be shipping?”

He didn’t use her first name, still holding back on the charm. That wasn’t good.

“A piano.” She flashed the black AmEx, watching his suspicions extinguish like a candle at the thought of how many times he could markup the freight on an item that big for an unsuspecting civillian.

“Well.” His tone was different now, dripping honey. ”You’ve come to the right place, Tipper.”

*****

Clint could hear the conversation over the channel, adjusting the volume to prevent the tinny sound from traveling any further than his ear canal. He didn’t doubt Natasha would keep him busy. Perhaps she’d even get into the office with him. In some ways that could work well if Korostav was the type to give away signals over the important things. Part of being prepared, however, was side eyeing positive outcomes and never planning for them.

So he moved on. Natasha was buying him time and Clint was never one to waste a gift as precious as that. Besides, he only had about two minutes to get down the hall and into the secondary corridor before the security cameras had panned back over.

While he made it in record time there was a part of Clint that still remembered when this had all been new. When breaking into an office had required more force than finesse and when finding the paper trail meant leaving one of his own. The definition of green must have had Clint’s younger self in it because looking back on it all still made Clint wonder how he’d ever lived to the age he was. There was a complex answer to that question, as all true-to-life answers tended to be.

The easy explanation was Tasha. When he said he learned from the best Clint meant it. And while his own arrogance liked to attribute a large portion of skill to himself, there were only a few hands that could be said to have molded the finer points to what they were.

Tasha had left his mark on him, and in more ways than how to steal the ID card he currently needed. His target was an unsuspecting, middle-aged worker, belt looped sloppily through only four of five loops and ID card swinging as precariously as the man’s junk seemed to be (and that was a traumatizing image at face level as anything). Still, Clint always had fast fingers and an unnerving ability to not lose focus, both of which helped in him finally slipping into the main shipping depot with a new ID card in his pocket.

The floor was only loosely busy, the weekend taking its toll on worker motivation and attendance. It was an easy feat to grab a dossier, flipping through the ledger with disinterest. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Personal effects with low dollar amounts meant personal possessions, and the way the workers were loading a truck with nonchalant tosses meant there was likely nothing of interest.

One entry had him pausing however: S.D.-011-9739-MSCW. The initials were warning enough - everyone knew anonymity was a red flag in pretty much every case - though the 9739 listed afterward was unique as well on the long list of like items. A corresponding order form indicated the shipment was due to be sent tomorrow and, helpfully, listed a grid number that meant nothing at the moment.

Clint frowned and flipped until he found a legend. The prefix of 011 meant perishable goods. A start. But a quick scan found no storage possibilities nearby.

Frown deepening he moved on, slipping into an office and glancing for cameras. The one there was quickly restarted with a simple push of a button, easy to explain with a glitch. It also gave him about thirty seconds to relay, quietly, “Found somethin’ to go off of. Got a grid number: 4BW. Not sure where. Looking into now.”

*****

Tipper raised a hand to toy with her hair, and Natasha tapped twice on the comm, letting Clint know she copied.

“If you’ll just step into my office a moment, I can run some calculations and draw up a quote for you.”

Tasha knew an indecent offer when she heard one. So did the receptionist, who strategically ignored the two of them, focusing sharply on the computer screen in front of her instead.

“Of course. I’ve got nothing but time.”

Tipper’s smile was wide and welcoming as she followed him. She knew the room from the blueprints — one way in, one way out. It was a good place to keep him while Clint worked. The door closed, and Tasha leaned lightly against the wall, feeling the Beretta in her shoulder holster beneath her jacket. She hadn’t planned on having the mark alone, and it might be a problem if he got handsy.

“What kind of piano are we talking about, Tipper?”

Angling that shoulder away from him, she shrugged, all money and no detail. Typical trophy wife. And what a trophy.

“Something grand. Haven’t bought it yet.” She smiled winningly. “Wanted to make sure I could get it home first.”

“And where’s home?” Korostav steered the conversation gently away from business, pausing with the order notes he was taking.

“Iowa.” It was the first thing that popped into her head, and she knew exactly why.

“You’ve come a long way.” He set the clipboard aside.

“I grew up here.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Your accent. It’s perfect. That explains it. And your brother…?” His hand waved in the air, letting the sentence linger.

“Husband.” Damn. Either they hadn’t been believable, or Korostav was baiting her. Probably the latter. She held up her hand, flashing the rings that had been issued her. Just two cold pieces of metal; it was easy enough to let him think she could disregard them. So she smiled, insatiable as she tucked the hand behind her back.

“Of course,” he covered smoothly. “Will you be in town long?”

“Til the end of the month.” _So much time_ , her eyes promised. He saw it, was hungry for it even before it was offered.

“You must come to my gala.” He shifted closer, and it was a statement, not a question. “Your husband, too.” A cover, to appease his wife. She was important; he couldn’t risk alienating her.

“I’d be honoured,” Tipper purred, not backing down as he slowly infiltrated her personal space.

*****

Clint was already eyeing the office when Natasha tapped back. Cold coffee, overflowing waste basket, and English word of the day calendar stuck on ‘necrophilia’ - Clint really wanted to be on whatever tour the guy ended up on when he used _that_ word - indicated the occupant was not in today. It also meant moving papers was easy; after all, the door had been unlocked so someone had already clearly messed up the order.

There was nothing suspicious, not that Clint expected what was obviously a junior manager to be storing state secrets. But 4BW turned up on a blueprint of storage around the base. From there it was easy to slip back out and catch a ride on a flat back to the main place.

Even the groan of overworked tires couldn’t quite disguise the conversation on the other end of the line and Clint had to roll his eyes. There were parts he could hear and parts he was tuning out because, while he was almost fluent in Russian, there were just some words he had issues with. Besides, no translation was necessary for the smooth tone of Korostav, though. It was the same in every language and indicated that an entirely different organ was speaking all together.

A different conversation had his attention snapping away though as the small flat turned down a service route, slowing and causing the echo of the two drivers to bounce back onto Clint.

“I keep telling you, there’s something unusual about it all.”

“Not this again…”

“I’ve been in this job for twenty years, Leo; I have worked here since I was yet a teenager and have worked the night shift for as long as I can remember!” Clint frowned a bit, unsure where this was going and really hoping that it was either a mistress or something equally entertaining.

The answer voice was exasperated. “So you’ve told me, every day-“

“Twenty years of loyalty and I am repaid with what? New shift with less to show for it.”

”It is the state of things, Ivan.”

“It has not been the state of things here until Stepan Chekovich, with his black suited workers and his closed doors.” There was a squeal of breaks harsh enough to cause a box to dig into Clint’s back. “I do not trust him.”

“You aren’t paid to trust him, friend. You are paid to work.”

That ended their discussion, and Clint had to bail before the two exited. He just made it, and part of him hoped the burlier of the two was double checking that his cigarette had been stomped out instead of whether that black thing had been a rat or a shoe disappearing around the corner. But no one pursued and it gave Clint a chance to reflect as he made his way down the hall.

A new manager, from the sounds of it, with new policies. Why kick out an older worker for a different shift? Efficiency wasn’t likely the answer. He knew for a fact routine was prized in jobs like this. Which left something else much fishier, because honestly: night shift, new manager, weird workers? It practically justified Clint’s job, so he’d have to give intelligence that; they actually were on to something. Maybe.

It took a few minutes of skulking into the shadows and an extra minute to wait for a break room to clear out. But finally he was picking the lock and slipping into 4BW, tapping his mic to confirm that he was in.

*****

Korostav was not a large man, but neither was he slight. Dark haired and dark eyed, he probably had vodka for blood and he wore too much cologne. His movements belied every ounce of intent between his ears, and Natasha was vaguely digusted at just how breakable he was, in so many ways.

He moved in, and half in character, half in defiance, she didn’t move a muscle. She just smiled, serene and inviting, but he reached just past her to the countertop she leaned against. He opened a drawer, pulling out a thick invitation on heavy cream linen paper.

“Tipper + guest” he wrote inside, his strokes heavy and slanting, the paper soaking up the dark, wet ink like a sponge. Even his handwriting was so bold, so sure of himself. She’d been taught the lesson of humility very early in her life. Oh, she had pride, but she could never forget that lesson, and she knew it was something this man had not learned.

“You’re too kind,” she drawled, managing to colour the harsh Russian consonants with a breathy smile. She let her fingers graze his as she graciously accepted the invite, tucking it into her purse. A designer label, she’d just noticed. The snippets of conversation on Clint’s end trickled into her ear, her face an impasse; she’d had years of practice keeping conversations straight.

“For you, anything.”

That was a dangerous promise, but in this case it was empty. It had been on the tip of her tongue once, and it didn’t matter that she hadn’t actually uttered it, because it’d found its way to her heart all the same. Even now, she didn’t know if that made her weak or if it redeemed her in some small way, but one thing she was certain of: his paltry words had nothing to do with the faith it took to make that promise.

She toyed with her earring, tapping out three times to Clint, their message for “hurry.”

He capped his pen, making no move to relinquish her space. Under the guise of brushing her hand down his arm, Natasha made sure he wouldn’t come any further. His cologne was stifling, and though she could do this all day, she didn’t want to. And S.H.I.E.L.D. meant that she always had a choice.

“I’ll have to find something to wear,” she flirted. She let her tone detail that it would be slinky, held up by her curves and prayer. This of all things she could do in her sleep. After all, the greatest whisper about The Black Widow was her sexual prowess, but it was all mechanics. Sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors; it was easy to make men see what they wanted to see. This time was no different.

*****

Clint had been expecting a hodgepodge of things, from small packages in brown paper to large crates. As usual, the cinema set him up for disappointment. Stacks of mostly uniform boxes dominated the large room, packed in with purpose and nowhere close to the mystique that Indiana Jones had promised. It was disappointing, then again a lot in Clint’s life had ended disappointingly. Maybe next time.

Fortunately, the uniformity meant that finding the unusual was easy. Or would be if there were anything to find. An initial sweep easily gave away where the cameras were. Nothing, however, stood out at first glance as warranting special attention.

With a frown Clint moved through the maze and tried not to wonder if it was a metaphor for his life. The conversation on Tasha’s end was distracting enough and not just in the way a prick of something pinged through his chest. He would never call it protectiveness. Natasha would hit him for that and he wouldn’t blame her. They were long past the point of that luxury.

Still, even a year after Manhattan some things had changed, and there were no words to accurately put the knowledge that had come with seeing what life would have been like on the other side.

He almost missed the small door off the south-west wall, half hidden by a box tall enough to fit a giraffe. The lettering on the door glinted in the dim light though, and the word “Private” were practically an invitation in of itself.

It only took a few moments to get to the door, another few to pick the lock, and with a quiet look around he slipped in, frowning.

No video camera, no wire, no warning system of any kind. Yet the door had been locked and inside sat three locked, white cases with more warning stickers covering it than a hipster’s guitar case. Something reeked of back room business, but where the catch was Clint wasn’t sure. That, perhaps, made him more nervous than the fact that he was poking into this depth at all.

By the time the three taps came he already knew there were issues. A spread of papers meant no time to figure out what was important. He couldn’t read fast enough to decipher even the titles, much less in Russian, and it was moments like that where Clint wondered just why he was on the payroll.

Still, instinct told him the cases were more important. So he pocketed the camera, praying that the things he’d taken pictures of were important, and turned away to examine the nearest container.

His mind clicked through possibilities as he fingered the expensive, foreign lock. He’d seen enough of those symbols to know that whatever was inside was flammable radioactive, and reactive to air. All by themselves meant a fun time for everyone. Yet there were no other safety measures besides the hard case and the box was cool to the touch. Something inside was on ice, and hopefully that meant frozen enough to not blow up in his face.

The lock was easy to break if you knew the trick, which he fortunately did. A small insertion of a paperclip into the thick base, another into the electrical receiver and the thing reset, clicking open. A back door for idiots, but only the really smart or the really well-informed kind. As easy as the lock was, Clint almost laughed at the contents inside.

Boxes. Small, white boxes slightly frosted over. A nine by nine stack, three high if Clint was any kind of judge, with more warnings.

If he had time he’d take pictures. As such, he didn’t, so he did the first thing he thought of which was dig to the bottom and take one, cursing softly at the cold. A nearby book took its place to plump up the stack and with a few careful insertions and pressings the lock resettled.

Done.

Three quick taps and a long one said as much as he moved to reset the room. He’d go out the door by the service ramp. With any luck, it would be empty and he’d rendezvous with Tasha on the other side of the compound.

*****

“Something red?” Korostav prompted, and he did nothing to disguise the way his eye travelled the length of her body. She’d thought for a moment it would be hard to leer at someone in three layers, as the finer points of her figure were well hidden from the cold, but he managed it just fine.

“I don’t like to be predictable.” It occurred to her that she didn’t think she’d uttered a sentence more true than that since she’d gotten off the plane.

“Surprise me, then.” He moved closer, his movements the forced gentleness of a hunter trying not to scare a rabbit, and oh, could he have been more wrong?

Natasha didn’t answer, her cool never wavering as she let herself be crowded into the corner. She would undoubtedly surprise him, but not in the way he wanted, and not yet. Not when they still had so much to bring back.

“I can do that.” She let her voice sink to a husky whisper, a voice she’d learned to utilise far before she ever worked for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Korostav’s eyes lit up; he liked a capable woman. It was almost too bad that he had no way of knowing exactly how capable Natasha was. Right now, her struggle centered on the fact that she knew she could not only kill him in upwards of 30 different ways, she could cloak her DNA trail and be stateside before anyone found the body.

But that wasn’t the mission, and the mission was gospel. It was that belief that she’d always held dear, that common thread that held her tenuous life together.

And so she shifted slightly, opening her posture to let her body language do the talking, her thighs grazing his now, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears and giving one unbroken, near-endless signal. _Get me out of here, Barton,_ she thought. _An alarm. A bomb. A phonecall, I don’t care, just do it._

Logically, she knew he would have done even without the signal, seeing as she wouldn’t be there to meet him at their rendezvouz point. What she wanted was for it to happen before Korostav was encouraged any further. She’d done worse for less, of course, and if an office tryst was what it took to keep his doubts at bay, she wouldn’t bat an eye. But she had a partner on the ground not 100 feet from where she stood, and if that wasn’t the very definition of convenience, she didn’t know what was.

*****

The mission was gospel, always gospel, whether in black ink or blue print and words placed into his head. Clint, however, had never been a particularly religious man, and found that the gospel sometimes needed a heavy dose of correction to get to the ending. Which was why, though procedure demanded he get to a safe spot before answering Tasha’s signal, he hunkered down behind a mess of exterior piping, pulled out his phone, and without a second thought dialed Natasha’s number.

If need had been he would have done more. A fire alarm, a fight, a down electrical system. All options that would take the attention of Natasha and allow her to slip away with the ease that she had been born with and honed to use.

A phone call, however, was discrete and kept them within mission parameters. Sitwell would be thrilled. Natasha’s phone buzzed almost immediately in her pocket.

“Your husband, no doubt.” Korostav’s tone could only be classified as a polite growl, and with a moment’s hesitation, he took a step back to allow her to reach into her phone. She checked the ID on the front curiously — as if anyone else had this number — and tapped the screen before holding the phone to her ear.

“Hello?” Her eyes didn’t leave Korostav’s. Marks gave things away all the time, and she was trained to never miss it when they did. The only thing she could gather from him right now, though, was the way he watched her lips as she spoke. Useless.

“Darling, aren’t you quite done? We have reservations for that one god-awful place and I’d love to miss.”

Not perfect Russian but the tension in his voice belied him. After all, it was hard to be pleasant when you had an ice cold box practically freezing your nipple off.

“Oh, you know, I’d nearly forgotten those reservations.” She trailed a fingertip absently behind her earlobe, down her neck until it met with the collar of her jumper. The muscles in Korostav’s jaw jumped.

Clint only half listened to her response, taking the cue when she stopped talking to talk once more and using the down time to cross the yard, behind a truck, and eventually across the street into safety.

“I understand, but that museum of really old people’s stuff isn’t going to see itself.”

“No, no, we still have time to see the museum, lover. I know how interested you are in antiques.” If there was laughter in her voice that wasn’t quite cloaked, it wasn’t out of place. “Yes, it can be shipped. And here you thought you were going to get out of buying a piano.” She smiled knowingly at the Russian in front of her.

The spare key wasn’t in Clint's pocket, but was under the driver’s side, in the little lock box that he knew the combination to by heart. Numbers were always easier, after all.

“I’ll pick you up.”

“Yes, I’ll meet you in the car park.”

She hung up the phone and smoothly extracted herself, one simple step giving her advantage of the small space and a clear route to the exit. If they didn’t still need him, Korostav would be dead already.

“I’ll see you at the gala,” she said, more a promise than a statement, reshouldering her purse and checking her reflection in the small square of glass inset in the industrial door as she moved to leave.

“Yes.” He didn’t move, watching her from head to toe all at once. “You will.”

Clint shrugged on a presentable jacket as the box was shoved in the back. He gave a few curses as he rubbed the frozen area, wondering if that was what a bag of frozen peas felt like.

It was no surprise that the heat was turned up when he finally pulled the car into the roundabout out front, laying on the horn for good measure. Natasha gave their mark an apologetic smile and ducked out of the office just as the sound blared.

* * * * *

Natasha dropped into the front seat gracefully, leaning over to press a kiss to the corner of Clint’s mouth. She didn’t put it past Korostav to be watching, and she let an uncharacteristically wide smile curve her lips.

Clint had seen a lot of leers in his days, directed at himself, at Coulson even, but mostly at Natasha. There had been so many in his life that as he watched Natasha emerge and Korostav appear behind her, lingering at the door like a barnacle not ready to let go, he knew that they were at least at hungry coyote status. He could almost believe Natasha was leaving swirling dust trails in her retreat.

It also meant that when she reached the van he was prepared with a pout befitting a well-whipped husband. The jaunty wave he gave the man wasn’t even acknowledged, and Clint knew he was successfully off the radar. It would likely help them later, even if a small part of him was mentally comparing shoe size.

Not that Clint was jealous. There were other things, other people who had taken that place a long time ago. But Natasha was his partner and sometimes there were parts of the job he hated.

“Miss me, ‘darling’?”

She’d surreptitiously checked her person for bugs on the walk to the car, so if they were being watched, she was quite sure that they weren’t being listen in on. Not waiting for an answer, she settled back into her seat.

“Of course I did, ‘dear’.” There was less amusement in the smile than a brief flash of concern. Fortunately, a quick once over was well within his role’s rights before putting the car into drive.

“Sentimentalist.” And she wasn’t talking about the nickname; Clint didn’t bend protocols for anyone else.

He huffed softly. “Convenience.” Though his own counter rang hollow at the fact that they both knew whose word was closer to the truth.

Clint wasn’t one for sentiment, but there would always be that fundamental difference between him and Natasha in the fact that he understood it. Or, at least parts of him did. Because while he was excellent at compartmentalizing, there was still the implication that there were things that had to be separated. Putting them away didn’t mean they weren’t there. It just meant that Clint knew some day loyalty would get him killed.

There was the stiffness of something unneeded rising though, so Clint cleared his throat and reached for the dash. The radio was newer than the car for a reason. A click to a certain AM station gave them nothing but silence, the almost undetectable buzz of interference underneath.

If someone was listening in, they weren’t anymore. “Picked you up a present.” He nodded his head toward the back seat, the frosted box dripping with condensation. “Can’t say I don’t treat Tipper right.” A teasing grin, though a bit of bite underneath directed at someone not there.

Once they’d turned out of sight of the establishment, Tasha braced a hand on Clint’s shoulder as she craned to look appraisingly into the backseat.

“Oh, Donner. You shouldn’t have,” she deadpanned, raising an eyebrow. “That’s quite a lock.”

While she didn’t know the secret to picking it, she knew that he did, but the change in topic was necessary. She knew the lack of tension in her touch would let her know she was alright. As unsavoury as it was, there was little she knew how to field better than male interest. Hell, she’d seduced her share of women in the name of official business. None of it mattered to her. For the most part.

With that he glanced at Natasha out of his peripherals and raised an eyebrow. Comms on didn’t mean he caught every word of the conversation. He trusted Tasha enough to fill in the gaps, which was why he asked, “Please tell me there’s no suit and tie in the future.”

“Hate to break it to you…” She settled back into her seat, eyes on the road as she dipped nimble fingers down into her purse, the heavyweight invitation lolling between two fingers as she flashed it at him, tossing it onto the dash with a flourish, “…but you’re going to need a penguin suit night after tomorrow.”

It was almost amusing. She knew he hated them, but even she couldn’t deny that the look suited him. Sure, his discomfort was obvious — to her, at least — but there was something about the juxtaposition of all his ease and roughness in the black-and-white trappings that worked.

“I’ll help you shine your shoes.”

There was a ghost of a smile now at the corners of Natasha’s mouth; she was definitely teasing. But besides the opportunity to tease, it presented the opportunity for dancing — the one aspect of this mission she’d been actually looking forward to, though she’d never admit it. Not even to the man beside her.

The flash of calligraphy and heavy paper had Clint groaning his exact thoughts on that penguin suit. Suits were necessary, yes. But suits belonged, truly belonged that is, on only one person and he wasn’t there right now.

Yet there was nothing that could be done about either fact: they were in this alone and the suit would have to be worn. It didn’t mean that Clint wouldn’t shoot Nat a grimace or make faces under his breath. But as alone as they were there was always the reminder in that deft touch and unsaid tone of just who he was partnering with.

Aside from all that, it set them up perfectly to work as they’d always worked best: honeytrap and agent. The bait and infiltrate. When it worked out, it usually amounted to their cleanest, most precise work. She was very good at holding attention, especially in a place like this where it practically happened on accident, and Clint was very good at locks. Alarm disabling. Silent extraction of security personnel. And, as she’d been reminded, the bending of protocol.

They were good. This last encounter proved that, if nothing else, S.H.I.E.L.D. kept them around for their sheer ability to deliver results. No one could say less of Strike Team Delta. Clint still didn’t know what was in the box or on the pictures he had. But the fact that they had them already made up a positive report right there.

Then again, they also did have another reputation. As well as a blacklist at several major hotel chains.

“I’ll be armed, naturally.” Her tone said: _Don’t worry about me_. She slid a glance sideways, noting the way his hands rested against the steering wheel. If she didn’t know better, she’d say his fingers itched for a bow.

“Natasha, if you aren’t armed I’d be surprised.” There was a deliberate, dramatic pause there as Clint glanced sideways and mistook the ghost of a smile for teasing. “And we both know your fingernails alone are registered weapons.”

Tasha just smiled, pretending to spare a long glance at them. She didn’t actually care what they looked like, but kept them up for the sake of undercover missions. She had assassin’s hands, anyone who had met her knew as much, but at times like this it was better that they were filed and buffed and painted a soft grey. They didn’t look like her hands anymore, but they still worked the same. It was just who she was; Clint’s hands itched for a bow; Tasha’s hands didn’t need to itch for anything. She was a weapon in and of herself, every part of her taught and programmed to be called into action.

If he thought about it enough, that thought alone was enough to damper Clint’s spirits. He’d never admit to that sentiment, but there were times he wondered what they would have been if things had been different.

“We’ll have intel pull up this house,” he said in return, the safehouse within view at last as the clouds over head finally broke and let loose a soft snow that only promised to get heavier through the night.

Natasha went quiet in the passenger seat. She knew intimately what snow felt like, the weight of it as it held down every step you took, when it froze your eyelashes and the ends of your hair, when it was all you could see and you found yourself blinking just to save yourself the blinding white for a fraction of a second. She could survive in the worst of conditions, and nothing proved that more than snow, but that didn’t mean she liked it.

But then, she didn't have to. Round two was definitely on.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three mugs, two agents, one elephant in the room.

The garage closed behind them before Clint got out, moving to grab the still cold box from the back, cursing as the condensation and frost bit into his fingers. If he thought he felt Tasha rolling her eyes at him he said nothing, opting instead to level her with a ‘very funny’ glare before moving in to help check the house.

Nothing was out of place, no reports and no alarms triggered. The trip wire over the windows was as he left it, which meant they were in relative stand down mode until tonight. With a glance at Tasha he left the findings on the coffee table, instead moving into the kitchen to start coffee. He’d warm up while she changed. When you were in the field, you took a few hours of comfort when you could.

Meanwhile, Tasha swept each room for bugs, knowing that just because their wires hadn’t been tripped didn’t mean that someone wasn’t as good as they were. Once the house was deemed clean, she shut the door to her room soundlessly, shedding Tipper’s clothes and slipping into her own yoga pants and mustard-coloured long sleeve shirt. It contrasted brightly with her hair, and for half a moment, it was enough to let her forget that it still snowed outside.

The scent of coffee brought her out of the room, her socks quiet on the hardwood.

He had the lock picks waiting and three mugs of coffee on the coffee table by the time they had accomplished what counted for settled. The box was carefully turned in his hands, over and over, eyes following the seam with a thoughtful frown casting over his face.

“Reminds me of those locks in the bio lab,” he said slowly. Not that he’d admit to breaking into the bio lab. Or being there at all. The biologists tended to be crankier than the R&D guys. “Or Chisinau.” There’d been few times on the job where Clint had not been able to keep it in. Puking in the alley behind the small restaurant, box of stolen organs at their feet, had been one of the few exceptions.

“There was a memo last week about the bio lab ‘Barton-proofing’,” she informed him, the tiny curve of amusement back on her lips. She knew him, and that wasn’t a deterrent, it was a challenge. The curve disappeared at his next words, and she curled up on the sofa beside him, tucking her long legs beneath her.

“And this isn’t Chisinau,” she assured him quietly, letting her shoulder rest against his for a moment before she reached for a mug.

Stomach turning at the thought he shook his head and glanced at Tasha. “I will kill someone if there are fingers or something in here.” He was already moving for the picks though, calloused hands working almost on memory alone.

The idea of Barton-proofing _was_ a challenge in his mind, and when his eyes darted to glance at Natasha there was a bit of a smirk on his face that was more excitement than amusement. When this was over – and it was always when, as Clint didn’t believe himself capable of if – he would undoubtedly be visiting the bio lab. He had to see this ‘Barton-proofing’ for himself. It’d been awhile since he’d taken Fresca from their hazardous materials fridge anyway.

The taste of Fresca seemed like a distant memory, however, the bitterness of cheap coffee on his tongue and the light smell of newly unpacked clothing in his nose. The latter was a smell he always associated with a mission, the distant odor of home lingering like a cold. It would be gone soon enough.

The tools clinked quietly in his hands, the metal not quite warm enough under his calluses to counter the fading cold of the box. They’d have to refrigerate what they found. But chances are they’d be rushing it off for delivery to one of the European divisions. He’d worry about logistics when they finally saw if it was worth the premium packaging it had been given.

Natasha watched him work for another long moment, the minute clink of the tools soothing in a way, but the details of any scene rarely escaped her. The coffee was black, but she didn’t have a preference; caffeine was caffeine, though her metabolism processed it faster than she’d like. Settling back against the cushion, she cradled the mug in chilled hands, giving him his space this time as she asked neutrally:

“Three mugs, Clint…?”

The tools paused and he glanced up with a frown. There _were_ three mugs, and for a moment he didn’t have an answer. Implications of that lack of answer were already making themselves known in his head and Clint really didn’t need more fodder for psych. Or for his own mind.

“It’s a two coffee process,” he finally said, nodding back down to the box and meeting Tasha’s eyes. The conversation on the topic was over. Now wasn’t the time for it, even if Clint wasn’t sure what the topic exactly was. Running away? Perhaps. But it was a mission after all. “Besides, kitchen’s too damn cold to keep goin’ back to.”

Clint’s eyes had always been the most expressive part about him. They gave things away even when he tried his hardest to hold onto them, but maybe that was only because she could read what was there as plainly as if it were printed on a page.

So when he met her gaze, she met his just as evenly, and didn’t challenge the note of finality in his voice, even if it was anything but final. She’d had her suspicions for a while now — but she wasn’t the only one on this team trained in the art of subterfuge. Secrets could be kept, sometimes. Just not for long.

An attempt at a smirk accompanied that before he turned back to the box. “Just another minute…” And he trailed off thinking instead of locks and mechanisms and whether a straight pin or a hook was better.

Though if his knee perhaps knocked against Tasha’s lightly, a reassurance or a promise for later (even Clint wasn’t sure), well... so be it.

She didn’t touch the third mug. She wished he could be there, too. Russia was always hard.

Instead, Tasha listened to the clink of precision tools, her expression as neutral as ever. But she was interested. You didn’t send Strike Team Delta after something small, and logically, she knew there was a very small chance that it _was_ fingers. In which case, she had a swift redirection plan; there was more to protect her partner from than the men on the other side of town.

True to his word, in under a minute the box hissed open and what seemed like smoke poured out, the white surface instantly covered in melting ice crystals. Clint swore and moved the box off his lap at the touch, smoke proving to be dry ice sublimating. He gave a glance to Tasha at the curses, however, because cold storage usually meant something biological. Even he knew that.

“I swear, if it’s fingers…” The promise trailed, however, as he flipped the lid open with a quick hand.

The dry ice cleared after a moment; there weren’t fingers. Instead there was single row of three vials, dark with blood, labeled in acronyms that swam in Clint’s vision. Russian letters that would have made no more sense than if they were in English. But Clint didn’t need to decode the words to know that they had probably just stumbled onto something.

Natasha wasn't satisfied with a nebulous discovery, and she took in the letters, her mind immediately beginning to slot them into the likeliest of codes, puzzling them out. Her face was blank for a long moment, all the movement behind her eyes, when suddenly the one at the far right fell into place.

 _R2_ , it said. Red Room.

Natasha’s language had always been crafted in the art of subtlety. What she said and did often weren’t what she truly meant. To know that you had to look in between, to the things unsaid, to the things undone. Clint had spent years honing his mastery of the reticent language.

The main point he’d learned is that only one person would ever be truly fluent.

She shut the box without latching the lock, keeping the cold inside. In 30 seconds she would be on the phone with HQ, arranging transport most likely via airlift, but right now she needed a moment for things discovered, good and bad. And trying to decide which was which.

Not moving her sights from the box, Tasha let her knee meet Clint’s, then turned her head a few degrees to brush her lips over his temple. Good for him. Good for one of them.

Immediately, he knew enough to know that something had changed between them in the way that kiss was delivered. A tell in of itself. The touch of their knees was a bit too hard and too pressed as if there were a finality in there. Silence buzzed between them with the weight of the unspoken and it was a similar weight that Clint found in the pit of his stomach even as the silence broke with the rustle of red hair moving away.

Clint knew the danger of the world between spaces. It was too easy to get lost, and they’d both been too lost to let each other go. No matter the things that took up either side of the void.

He needed to be found. She needed space. She needed a lot of things, actually, but she was going to regret more than half of them if she didn’t get up and move.

But when she moved to get up he stopped her, a quick catch of the wrist that few would dare. To her credit, she didn't aim an instinctual kick at his head, because there was no way she would ever be able to forget this exact combination of palm and fingertips and immediacy. Her frame was rife with tension beneath her loose clothes, and when she met his look, the lush bow of her lips twisted tight into equal parts caution and want.

Clint knew no one could ever truly catch Tasha, after all. He’d tried once. They’d both tried. It had ended how things usually did for them.

She held her breath as they watched each other, motionless and yet perfectly communicative. He moved first, and when he squeezed her hand she almost made a sound, and she didn’t want to look too close to see if what she was feeling was regret or relief. He knew what he needed to know, and that was going to have to be good enough for her right now, though she knew it never would be. She owed him a debt, and not all debts could be repaid.

He still gave her a look. A look that tried to catch the twisting in between and pin it amongst the unstable slide of job, work, what amounted for life. They were parts of a sum, but it didn’t make them any less integral to the thing they made up. It didn’t make Natasha any less important (and even that was a weak word for it) to him. Years had done nothing to make Clint good enough with words to express that, however.

Instead, he let her wrist slide through the loose grip to squeeze her hand. Just once. Enough to try to pull her back from the edge. His lips parted, but words had never meant much to either of them. There was no use trying to make them mean more now.

When he let go, the pit in his stomach remained, and Clint refused to give it a name.

“Base in Berlin’s closest.” The space slid by with that. “I’ll make dinner.”

She just nodded at his word - he’d always been the better cook, though that wasn't saying much — and padded off to deal with the job they were in the middle of. With that he stood to put a more comfortable space between them. To give a moment for the trappings to slide back over. There was a job, after all.

*****

The kitchen door closed behind Clint for the sheer fact that he knew she needed space. Perhaps they both did. A door closed wasn’t the same as being lost. Clint knew that. And he knew the importance of closed doors to people who relied on them for a living.

Safe house kitchens were always rather sparse. Rations tended to either be MREs or canned goods, anything easy to make with a microwave or boiling water. The shelves were sporadically stocked - canned goods were classified as projectiles after all, and had to be dispersed as such - and the choices were limited. It would be easiest to pull out the MREs.

Instead, Clint put a pan on and busied himself with the directions for rice. Anything to let the hard knot inside unfurl a bit, to soften like the rice currently floating in water. He knew he was a hard person by make. Honed to be so in the past and present years.

But when it came to his partner there were things that couldn’t be hardened, no matter how hard he tried. Natasha would always be the underbelly. Coulson would always be the Achilles heel. There was nothing he could do to make it otherwise. He’d been trying for years, and each time he found himself in hot water the years of shared gun shots and whispered words as blood ran exploded.

Parts of himself were always lost. And still he had yet to truly feel regret. It just went to show how much could change in the course of a decade.

Clint ran a hand through his hair, an audible sigh joining the soft ping of boiling water. Natasha would be off to Berlin. Tonight most likely. The house would groan and creak in the silence and he’d be left alone. He was used to loneliness and silence.

What he wasn’t used to was the shift that had moved their foundation an inch. Instability was a staple in their life. Clint just hated being the one to be the unstable thing. They would live, most assuredly so, considering their expertise in the fields of change and loss. Yet that was the thing that bothered him the most.

He was never lost, not to her, not to him. Not until he chose to be lost himself.

*****

Natasha paced the hardwood as her headset connected. “Agent Romanoff, requesting transport of evidence.” And then, from the hallway, she snarled into the disposable cell. “No, goddamnit, I don’t have a cold, it’s your connection. And I’ll thank you to forget the niceties and _do your fucking job, agent_.”

There were blessed few words after that, and just as Clint predicted, she was given a coded time to rendezvous with an extraction agent in Berlin. It had to be tomorrow, because they had to be back the following day for the gala, and —

The gala. It was almost a punch to the gut to remember what she’d been looking forward to as much as their job allowed. It would almost be too much for her to handle right now, being on his arm, dancing, smiling — almost. She had always been very good, and that gala could be no exception.

Tasha hung up after a simple confirmation and sagged against the wall, feeling drained in a way she hadn’t let herself feel in years. And just for tonight, drained was allowed. Tomorrow they had work to do.

From the kitchen, she could smell hot sauce, the tang of it sharp and familiar in the air. Nothing said “Clint’s cooking” like Louisianna Red. The water bubbled over from neglect, causing the stove to hiss and the meditative state to vanish just as quickly as the bubbles did. It gave Clint an excuse to push the issue aside. The gala was looming and the mission finish was as well. So he warmed up the can of red beans, dumped in hot sauce and canned chicken, tried to make it look less like something coming up instead of going in and failed miserably. But it was hot in his hands when he brought it back out, not at all surprised to find Tasha there with the same expression in the same place.

Still, she didn’t move, letting the wall have the task of holding her up. She still had a few moments to think, and though she had a long drive to Berlin on the table, Natasha couldn’t help but gravitate toward less military events. For a moment — just a moment, because she knew what longer would mean — she gave over to hate the fact that she couldn’t seem to mend herself, couldn’t seem to learn what Clint so obviously knew, couldn’t seem to function in an emotionally viable way.  
  
 _Who the hell even uses a phrase like that, “emotionally viable?,”_ she thought.  
  
She didn’t even try to hide her inner anguish as she took the warm bowl, not even caring what it was, and was silently grateful for the apparent decision that they would be ignoring this, too.

 _Professional, succinct, to the point. Just like any other day._ He handed over the bowl and spoon, not bothering to sit, and asked, “What are we lookin’ at? Didn’t look like the type of thing to be usin’ in blood sacrifices.”  
  
“Biomedical,” she answered. “Don’t you learn anything when you break into that lab?”  
  
It was habit that caused her to tease, but it was sharper than usual, and she took a bite to save herself from glancing at him, the most apologetic she ever got anymore. For a moment she looked almost shocked at the heat on her tongue, having forgotten the hot sauce already.

“Yeah, learned that the fifth floor lab likes Coke Zero over regular Coke.” A quip was all he could give in regards to the lab. A smile on his face that was more put on than he would have liked, because no matter how she tried to barrel on, Natasha was shaken, and that in turn was enough to unnerve Clint. The world was off balance and at the center of the shift was him. He could handle being a mover, a changer. What he had more trouble with was moving the world in a way that made green eyes avert, hidden behind red hair and an air of brusque nonchalance. Part of him knew that they would always end up hurting each other in the end. Part of him still had hoped they wouldn’t.

It took him a moment to reorient himself to the job underneath all this. His mind clicked back to the tasks at hand. Get the samples out. Figure out the next step. The gala, the charm, the con and the grab.

It wouldn’t be better to broach the whatever this was now. Not when he wasn’t even sure how to word it (because there wasn’t _anything_ really, just that gut wrench of knowing what was familiar and wanted). Natasha deserved more from him. Clint just wished he had the capacity to give her it.

Then again, Clint had wished for a lot of things in his life. Most of them hadn’t turned out, and sometimes he wondered if losing her hadn’t been a blessing in disguise for her sake.

“The question is whether they’re a unique sample because of their origin or because of their processing.”  
  
She resisted the urge to open the box again, knowing a cursory look wouldn’t tell her anything; they wouldn’t have data until it went through the lab. Speaking of which…  
  
“I have to leave for Berlin in 2 hours.”  
  
She didn’t invite him to come along, and Clint knew that the statement left no room for him. It was a declaration of what Natasha needed, or as close as she came to one. As far as she knew, they weren’t suspected or compromised in any way, there was no reason why they couldn’t be separated for the day it would take her to skirt Latveria and get to Germany and back. Yes, it was a long trip, but she couldn’t pretend to be asleep the whole way and she didn’t want to talk about this. Not yet. Maybe not ever. It would be much simpler if the SHIELD facilities in Helsinki hadn’t been converted to psych and intake evaluations a few years back, but then hindsight was 20/20; she’d never been more sure of that.

“I’ll check in with whoever’s out here.” Because there was likely another agent around. He just needed to ask HQ and figure out a rendezvous. “Maybe ask around.” He’d been in the underbelly before, after all. There were always avenues for things like this.

He did finally glance at her though, the question, the obvious, the ‘are you ok’ on the tip of his tongue dying in favor of, “Says a lot about your life when vials of blood ain’t exactly unusual.” Clint wished there had been more to go off of.

His hands circled his bowl and his shoulders hunched in, an unconscious effect at the fact that eye contact had yet to be made. Cowed under the weight of guilt over things he didn’t necessarily understand himself.

Not for the first time he wondered if perhaps emotions were overrated.

“Yeah, well…”  
  
There were about a hundred things she could say: _“Our lives aren’t exactly usual.”_ Understated and true. It was a good option. Or maybe: _“Let’s make bets on how long it’ll take me to get back from Berlin.”_ At least that way there was another 20 bucks in it for her. Or even: _“How long have you had it bad for Coulson, and better question, why did you feel like you had to hide it from me of all people?”_  
  
“At least it wasn’t fingers,” is what she went with, her spoon falling slack in her mostly-full bowl. Every second she sat here, avoiding his eyes, she hated herself a little more, and Tasha knew enough to nip a bad spiral in the bud.  
  
“I need to pack a few things.”  
  
A few guns is what she meant. Some smaller-scale explosives. Her dry shampoo. She wouldn’t be stopping for sleep, but she would pack a disguise just in case.  
  
So she sat dinner on top of the sample box unthinkingly — how was that for blasé? — and quickly closed herself into her bedroom.  
  
She didn’t waste time sulking. Focus burned through the sharp discomfort beneath her ribs, and she was ready in record time, a knife strapped to one thigh, another at the opposite ankle, a shoulder holster holding one of the Glocks she preferred, and a hollow ring full of a powdered poison that SHIELD themselves had developed. It was nice that way, because it meant they were the only ones who could run tracers on it, too.  
  
The next stop was the kitchen, where she scavenged for food she could eat one-handed while she drove. MRE’s were too fussy, so she settled on a frozen bag of almonds and some granola bars. They were even her favourite flavour. A small victory.  
  
“I’ll check in at 2 hour intervals beginning at 0400,” she said, talking at him, not to him. “And I will be back before midnight barring any mishaps.”

The samples box was the last thing she grabbed, carrying it gently under one arm. She met Clint’s eyes then for the first time.  
  
“Hold down the fort, Hawkeye.” Hawkeye. Not one of the myriad of nicknames she had for him. Even that small intimacy felt like too much right now.  
  
She was there one moment, then out the door the next, arranging things easily in the trunk except for the evidence, which she strapped into the passenger seat, and then she was out the garage and down the road, pacing herself to make up for the fact that she’d left ahead of schedule.

*****

Clint had been in the doghouse before. He’d been there with Coulson, with Natasha, hell, even with Barney. He was used to waiting for things to blow over, a practice way back when dear old dad was around to give it. And over the years, he’d gotten quite good at letting things roll away like water in oil.

But the terrible tragedy of Clint Barton was that, in the end, he always became attached. Stick around long enough, be there enough, and suddenly there were holes being filled.

Ten years at S.H.I.E.L.D. with him had crafted a niche. Only a few years shy of that found a mirror of that with her. And life had narrowed in to a focus on keeping those close, all the while knowing they would eventually leave.

The house wasn’t silent when Natasha left. The foundation shifted and groaned, a siren sounded in the distance, and if he listened hard enough someone somewhere was watching the news. But the noise reverberated off the suddenly hollow space and even if Clint told himself he was used to singularity the loss of his twelve was obvious.

Even more so with his code name ringing in his ears: Hawkeye. Just Hawkeye. Not Barton, not bird brain, not anything but the official and efficient.

Clint wasn’t proud of how that fact got to him. He wasn’t proud of the fact that he let himself give in to frustration. He was trained better than that. Knew better than that. But he couldn’t lie to himself completely that it felt good when the third coffee mug shattered against the wall.

For a long time he let the sound of breaking glass fill his ears, his own breath on the border of heavy. Hands pressed into fists pressed into his forehead. It helped keep his emotions from spilling out. But it did nothing to give him an answer as to where he went wrong.

By now it was simply ironic (but not really) that Hawkeye rhymed with good bye.  
  
He gave himself a minute to feel sorry for himself, acutely aware it did absolutely nothing and equally aware that he didn’t care. And in that minute he would have bargained his soul for the ability to be sure enough to know how things were. To be able to say as much.

But the devil never showed and the nearest crossroad demanded the car. So with a cold slam on those thoughts he did what anyone else would do. Clint cleaned up the glass, ran a cloth over the floor to pick up the coffee, and rechecked the alarms. He busied himself with the small details until his mind was overcrowded and clouded with mission, mission, mission.

Still, it didn’t make sleeping easier that night, waiting for those calls to come in. Each one was answered dutifully. Efficiently, quickly, and to the point. He tried to be distant. He did.

But he never called her anything but Tasha.

He never could call her anything else.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even in Russia, there can be oceans between them.

There was nothing for a brooding mind like an open road, and the crunch of loose rocks on asphalt was centering. She had always been good at this: hands at 10-and-2, drive from point A to point B. It was black and white, and the simplicity was healing in a way that Tasha would never admit she needed.

She made her first check-in with less than 30 seconds to spare.

“Still alive, still driving, go back to sleep.”

She knew what he sounded like when he’d been woken up, knew he hadn’t been sleeping, but disconnected anyway. The next few calls were the same, brief interruptions from the car full of her own demons — and one box of someone else’s — and after the first two, he really did sound asleep when he picked up.

If she were honest — and even now, she wasn’t always, not to herself, not where he was concerned — that had always been her favourite look on him. Not because he looked younger when his features were tinged with sleep, though he did, but because you couldn’t fake that sort of trust. The slack-jawed, closed eye, heavy-limbed way he’d slept next to her was still almost more than she could imagine.

It had taken her a much longer time to be able to return the favour.

* * * * *

Clint had never been a fan of mornings. Mornings meant waking to find someone was gone. Out of his life as easily as a shut door. It had been unbearable until he’d taken to leaving before light himself. It made it easier now, being the one locking the door and not looking back.

But the fact remained that something was always closing and the empty house was just a reminder of the beep of each closed connection on the phone.

He had to get out, so he did. Under the pretense of meeting their St. Petersburg contact he ventured into the new snow. Ran from reminders of last night with the crunch of snow and a cup of tea. The hot liquid burned his fingers through the cheap paper, but it was bitter and strong and it was enough to chase away the distaste of words unsaid if not the regret.

That was the thing he’d loved about her, at first. The way regret hadn’t mattered. How trials and tribulations ran off the Black Widow like oil and water. There had always been a type Clint was attracted to and she had fit every dot of an ‘i’ and cross of a ‘t’. Competent. Confident. Charismatic. The Black Widow hadn’t needed words to make her point known and Clint had wanted so badly to emulate that sheer power she radiated.

Then S.H.I.E.L.D. happened.

Then Budapest happened.

Then, suddenly, inexplicably, _predictably,_ Clint Barton found himself in love not just with the Black Widow but with Natasha Romanoff. Natalya. Her. And suddenly regret wasn’t a thing but a foundation they both knew. Glances turned into looks turned into talk turned into touch. And suddenly Clint found himself with far more than a life in his hands.

His life was built on failure, but what he’d realized he held one night in a rundown shack in Da Nang was one of the few things that could be classified as a success.

***

Natasha made the dropoff seamlessly, and was on her way back to Russia, maybe a half hour from the German border, when she called in her fifth checkin.

In St. Petersburg, Clint held onto the phone tightly in his jacket pocket, and when it rang he answered it quickly, not saying a word. Maybe it was the 10 hours of cooldown time, or maybe it was all the miles between them that made her feel more equipped to deal with the shift in their complex relationship, but her voice had a softer edge when she spoke this time.

“Morning, cowboy.” She hesitated just a moment, not really giving him time to reply. “I’m on my way back.”

 _I will always come back to you_ is what she didn’t say, but it was there, and she knew he heard it all the same. In a world where a moral compass was no help, he was her true north, even when he swayed, and she would always come back.

She didn’t let the call linger to be picked up and traced, but disconnected. For his part, it was funny how a simple word could inspire such a swirl of warmth so swiftly. He ducked his head at the nickname and tried to catch the opening. “Hey-” But she was gone.

The difference this time was that the disconnected tone didn’t seem so final anymore.

*****

Four check-ins later, she was pulling into the garage. Snow fell heavy again in the darkness.

_Always with the snow, Russia. You sure know how to oppress a girl._

She made more noise entering the house than she needed to, letting him know where she was. The smell of coffee immediately clouded her nose, and a quick look around revealed a nearly imperceptible stain on the wall. The way the edges fanned out from the point of impact put a cold stab of guilt back between her ribs; she could have left things in a better place. It wasn’t his fault, after all. It never had been.

A more in depth look told her that Clint wasn't here -- and since there was no sign of a struggle, she had no reason to be anything except disappointed.

*****

He got back later than he meant to, past the final check in call. A light snow had settled on his clothes, melting almost immediately at the warmer interior even as he punched in the all-clear code once the door had shut.

When he lifted his eyes she was watching him, and for a long moment the silence was threatening. Until, finally, he stated simply. “I hate tea.” He tried to force a smile out but it never quite made it.

Her smile was barely there, but it was accepting.

“I know.”

She remembered way back when, on the rare occasions she’d been found out not sleeping, nude except for the sheet curled around her and the book in her lap, she would brew a pot of tea. Even convinced him to join her a few times, but his cup was never empty like hers by the time the book was put aside.

She knew he remembered it, too.

There had been a motive in going out, however, one Clint couldn’t forget. So he pulled off his coat and brought out the manila envelope that had been the point in braving the new snow. When he moved beside her he let the envelope’s contents spill.

Tasha watched as he pulled out the envelope, spilling its contents on the table. She’d known he would be up to something while she was gone, as she was relieved to see he’d gotten out of the house. If she knew him (and she did) he was still brooding about things, because she certainly was, but Clint was first and foremost a storehouse of potential energy. She was destruction, he was production. And sometimes, that translated into intel.

She felt raw around the edges, road weary and tired and hungry and small, but it was far from the worst she’d ever felt in her life, and so she could do this tonight. Mission stuff, anyway. Maybe not facing down all the things that would eventually need to be said, because it took them both too long to find the words for anything. She would wait.

Or so she’d thought. The familiar weight of his broad hand on her shoulder was all she needed to know that some things couldn’t be left unsaid, and she leaned close, because she didn’t have the words yet and physical intimacy was a language they had always spoken perfectly, even after their relationship had ended. One slim arm wrapped around his waist, familiar if unexpected as it held him close, her fingertips resting against the ringspun cotton as she pressed her face to his shoulder. She wouldn’t tip her face up, didn’t trust herself not to make decisions she would inevitably regret, but the warmth of her breath washed over his collarbone through the warm fabric, and she radiated reassurance.

For a moment Clint was back in Madripoor, in the hotel by the river, watching their (fake) names being added to the black list as S.H.I.E.L.D. argued with Interpol over who got the shot in the end. She had a broken wrist. His shoulder was dislocated and his side littered with glass. But it didn’t matter in the end, nor did it matter who won the right to another body in prison, because that same slender arm around his waist had appeared, keeping him close and steadying him.

He had been home then. Perhaps not safe - Natasha was never truly safe - but enough so. There were few people Clint trusted enough to _just be_ with. But she was one of them and she always would be.

There was no reason to change that now. Probably never. At this point, Clint wasn’t sure he could stop, even if he wanted to. In a way, that thought scared him. In another way, it made him hold on tighter.

She let her nose travel the slope of his clavicle for maybe an inch, not needing words to tell him she was glad to be home, and certainly not meaning Russia. If Natasha were a person who apologised, this would be the perfect time to do it, but she wasn’t — and besides, she owed him too many to count. If she started now, she might never stop.

Almost unbidden (though he would never really regret similar actions with her) Clint ducked his head and let his nose bury in Tasha’s hair. He could smell her shampoo. Could feel the conditioner in her hair. Saw the exhausted waves it got when they’d had a long night. All of it familiar in a way that made him ache.

He wished he could tell her everything. How there wasn’t anything he could define. That it was an indefinable one-sided attraction that would ultimately result in nothing. There had never been returned interest, never a sign nor an encouragement. In the end, Clint had fallen for something beyond his reach. He always did. Proof of that was in his hands now. It wouldn’t matter if something came of it anyway. There would always be the indelible draw to this point right here, to bonds forged in Budapest and blood that were no easier broken than made.

Clint knew that if Natasha called, he would answer. No question, no hesitation. She was a clarion and few could accept that.

Tasha felt the duck of his head in the muscles of his back, and when his hand moved to stroke her hair once before it cradled her head, her breath caught, eyes stinging. Her instincts said that this was when normal people teared up, but she was only pliant beneath his hand, cataloguing each sensation to commit to memory.

The envelope was forgotten as his free hand moved to carefully run his finger tips through the tangles, smoothing down the wayward waves. Red strands caught slightly against his calluses, as it always did, until he lay his hand flat against the back of her head.

God how he wished, wished so badly that there would be something more. He exhaled at the warmth of her breath and his eyes closed at the off note in the noise, grimace pressed against her head. It was all sorrow, a longing to have answers that she so deserved from him, and a grief over the fact that there were things that wouldn’t be between them, between him and him.

He wouldn’t do Tasha the indignity of lying, so he said nothing and instead took the reassurance she gave him, letting it seep into his tendons and muscles and bones until the embrace was what it had been before all of this, or close enough. Any trespass was forgiven, even if Clint felt there had been nothing unjustified before.

So he reveled in what he had, in how she accepted each broken piece and each fumbled attempt. And more importantly how she came back. It was why he still loved her, in the end. She knew him, truly knew the sum of the parts that made Clint Barton. With her, he sometimes, _sometimes_ felt like someone worth saving. And there weren’t many people who could make looking in the mirror easier.

His intake of breath was the same thing the shake of her head was, a recognition of apologies that were too complex to craft. But the weight of his hand was enough, more than enough, after twenty hours in the car and the bleak landscape to and from Berlin.

So, having said she was sorry in the best way she could, she turned the topic back to the mission at hand.

“What’d you find?” she asked gently, her words slightly muffled against his shirt. She would pull away when the tension of his hands changed, when she felt acceptance in each and every tendon, and not before. With a soft kiss dropped to the crown of her head, Clint squeezed her shoulder then let go. He didn’t trust himself to keep things there otherwise.

“Not much we don’t already know. Though did find out Durchenko’s new money. Made a killing when the old regime fell. Seems like he’s got into a small fortune in the last decade, though ask anyone what his job is and they couldn’t tell ya. Goverment official.”

He gave her a look, all business now. “Korostav’s rumored to help him get where he is today. Thinkin’ we’ve got more than just two in on this, whatever it is.”

“They’re setting him up,” she said, her voice low and rough and so, so tired. “It happens a lot, they’ve gotten sloppy, not even trying to hide it…” She sighed. It did make their job eaiser. “They drop everything in the lap of someone who’ll do anything for it.” Her lips twisted. “Durchenko.” She spat the name. “There could be a hundred men behind him, but he’ll be the only one to fall.”

And as good as they were, they couldn’t take out a hundred men. She could see why this was an intel gathering mission. Trust her to be stuck in the middle of a Russian snowstorm on recon when all she wanted to do was shoot something. Clint frowned, letting his hands move away to push at the papers.

“Question is, what are they dropping in his lap? And why?”

There was only one way to find out, and he sighed at the realisation. Getting penguined up wasn’t his idea of a good time.

“Any idea on when they’ll get back to us about the Dr. Jekyll shit?” There had to be something going on. A connection of some sort. You didn’t have two of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best out here for something small.

“No clue.” She ran a hand over her face, a face that still needed to be scrubbed free of yesterday’s makeup. “It’s out of our hands, but it’d have to be something pretty damn important to change the mission parameters.”

Clint frowned but led the topic of the blood vials go. Technically, Natasha was right. Their mission was the Korostav’s and not mysterious biohazard containers. But the vials would niggle at him for the entire time they were here. Body parts and blood weren’t too far off from each other after all. Honestly, it felt like something was missing. A connection between them all that was hidden beneath the surface. These things tended to be permeating, like roots of an old tree. They were in Russia after all, birthplace of a thousand different grudges and revolutions. The land had secrets Clint would never understand.

He glanced at Natasha, an awkwardness from earlier replaced by the ease of the job. “Think we need to look into Korostav’s wife a bit more. We’re missin’ something.”

In response, Natasha flipped open the dossier they’d been sent with, refreshing their memory.

“Alina Korostava. PhD from Novosibirsk U, specialising in biochemical engineering.” She shook her head. “She’s probably had more schooling off the books, the Red Room has people for that.”

They had people for everything. Doctors to psychiatrists to neurologists to plastic surgeons. Tutors to teach you the science of criminal profiling so that you could avoid patterns. Torture specialists, both for instruction and for when you got out of hand.

“Red Room.” The name rolled off his tongue bitterly, uncomfortably, and he glanced sideways at Tasha. Just a quick check, because that name had power yet.

“You can stop saying that name. Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

It was a lie, but a familiar one, and there was comfort in it. Red Room would always hurt, but it hurt a little less to know Clint would always give her that look. He couldn’t do anything about it, they’d established that a long time ago, but the fact that he wanted to meant something.

She turned her attention pointedly to the dated headshot. It was definitely the woman from the first evening at dinner.

“She’ll be there tomorrow. Korostav will likely try to give her the slip at some point, which is good and bad news for us.” Her voice was neutral as she spelled it out. “He’ll find me, no doubt. But that means I won’t be able to keep an eye on her.”

She wanted to remind him to be prepared, to be sure and come back, but she knew it was wholly unnecessary and mildly insulting. Clint would never underestimate a woman, not since he’d met her.

“I guarantee you she’s responsible for those samples, Korostav is just the threat behind the work. and Durchenko is the fall guy. This would be so much easier if they were actually interested in each other…” Though it was hardly the first time it had happened, there had been a time in Kiev that she’d seduced a KGB couple so thoroughly that recon had been cleared for a No Questions Kill by the end of the week. They’d told her everything and more, and she’d taken them out so neatly that the file had almost deserved a ribbon on top.

His frown only deepened at the implications. It had been awhile since he’d had to take someone to bed for the sake of information. That was more Natasha’s game, no matter how much the implication made him bristle. He was much more the point and shoot type and tended to be the one waiting the next building over just in case Natasha needed a quick way out. She rarely did. Usually it was him who found himself having to jump out of the second story window.

“You always get to seduce the rich guy,” he said, though he was frowning. The joke was still good, though masked by the fact that neither of them would have fallen for husband or wife in any other circumstance.

“Can’t help it if the rich guy is a dumbass,” she quipped. Granted, the Red Room had been thorough in their training, and she was more than believable when she decided it was prudent to let someone think she was interested, but it almost hurt that they fell for it every time.

Almost. Because beyond that little pinprick of hurt was the pride of knowing she was still effective.

With a sigh, she leaned back on the couch, hissing when her shoulder holster dug into her ribs. The hardness in his eyes faded a bit at the sound.  She yanked the thing off violently, hit suddenly with the force of her exhaustion, and Clint took the holster from her, setting it on the table. The bags under her eyes mirrored how the fringes of emotion were in him.

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” she closed her eyes, “…but I’m going after the leftovers, and then we both need rest for tomorrow.”

Tasha wasn’t anywhere near the end of her rope, but she was far enough down that something needed to be done. And that something was sustenance, a shower, and bed, preferably in that order. Tomorrow was their power play, the reason they’d been sent instead of anyone else, and this mission could not be a disaster.

They both took disasters too hard these days.

He said nothing about exactly _where_ they would rest. Temptation was too strong as it was right now. “You sure about that?” Off her look he expanded, “Pretty sure the leftovers are the stink in the fridge.” Clean-up would _love_ them. The smile he gave though was a bit more solid.

Tasha lifted her eyes toward the fridge dubiously. If she bolted another granola bar, she’d be fine til morning. Bonus, it would take less time.

“Right. Shower.”

It was more to convince herself that’s where she was going, because even an idiot could feel the magnetism between them right now. They’d made this mistake so many times that it was hardly a mistake anymore, just an occurrence that they didn’t make mention of and moved on from… but it was an occurrence they made on their own time. Not in the middle of a mission that could be compromised. And thanks to the Red Room, or from her own twisted sense of loyalty, she still wasn’t sure — the mission won every time. That’s what she’d been made for, after all.

If Clint listened hard, he could pretend there was an invitation in that announcement, and maybe he wasn’t wrong. There was a time where he would have taken her up on it. Standard protocol these days demanded a certain amount of separation between themselves and rarely extended to the bed. But a hint like that would have inevitably led to the feeling of her in his arms, even if it was just an echo of a few moments.

So even though he was tempted, even though he found himself reaching to put fingertips on her knee, he aborted the action half way through it because he knew what she knew: that the mission had to come first. Exhaling softly, he looked back up, face carefully rearranged once more.

“Preliminary drive by at 10:00 hours. I’ll make eggs. It’ll be fun.”

As simple as that he rose. Any longer and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to leave. Right now, it was for the best. Not here, not now, not on a mission with a power play like this. They both needed to look each other in the eye tomorrow.

“Night, Tasha,” he said with that softness that meant he was doing his best. In the morning the armor would be back, the pieces mended together with a fresh coat of gloss, and they’d both look back and pretend that they had no idea why there was something new there to begin with.

“10:00, roger.” God, she sounded tired even to her own ears. “Night, Clint.”

She watched him walk away, and knew even then she knew that she would count it in the top ten hardest things she’d ever done. When he was out of sight, she grabbed a bar from her bag, unwrapping it as she slunk down the hall to her room. All S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouses had a transparent shower curtain, because safety trumped privacy in the field, and she watched the doorknob even as she rinsed her hair under the spray, her eyes held open under the onslaught of softened water.

It didn’t move once.

If it had been any other night, Tasha might have padded into Clint’s quarters, content to slide into bed behind him, even if he didn’t budge. The rhythm of his breathing was sometimes enough. But sometimes it wasn’t, and they had a job to do.

So she crawled into bed, her hair wet against the pillow, and slept.

*****

In his room as he lay in bed, Clint could feel the coldness slipping through from the air around, could smell the faint scent of her shampoo on the air. The small bed was large and empty to him. He knew it didn’t matter what size the mattress ultimately was, it would feel the same here, there, and everywhere he went.

Regret was something Clint tried to actively avoid. Yet it hit every time, and always in the night when his eyes had nothing to focus on but his own thoughts.

It was hard not to look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can read about Natasha's mission in Kiev [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/804242/chapters/1516834)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party don't start til they walk in.

Sleep had been slow to come, but Clint had managed. He knew the consequences of not managing, and he needed his eyes focused and fingers careful, both for his sake and hers. If there were two people he couldn’t bring himself to harm, in passing or on purpose, Natasha was one of them.

Fortunately, eyes and hands were proving to be in good order as he watched the house. Breakfast had been fairly silent, evidence of the meal lingering in the coffee thermos of bland oatmeal by Clint’s side.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate Natasha’s offering. Any time he didn’t have to cook was a good one. He just wished that S.H.I.E.L.D. field training (or even Red Room for that matter) had included at least some basic instruction on how to make oatmeal taste like anything but glued together mush. She had tried, valiantly, and he knew the sugar on top had been an apology and peace offering rolled into one.

She’d settled on a glass of juice for herself — made from frozen concentrate — and another granola bar. She wasn’t touching the damn things for a month after this.

Even then, the thermos was still half full and long forgotten for the surveillance they were running. He frowned as he scanned the first floor once more. “Three cameras - center, east, and second floor on the west side. Look like they’re the same as the one on the gate, though, so same circuit. Just gotta find mission control.”

He glanced at Natasha. “With the party, won’t be able to run a loop. Maybe a system reset? Get the boys to rig up a virus. One shot and it’ll be down for about ten, maybe fifteen.”

It would give him time to snoop and give Natasha time to work the room without worrying about tracking. Not that Tasha ever had to worry about being tracked. The few who were foolish enough to do so quickly learned why no one did.

“We don’t need the boys for this,” she promised, looking down the nose of a compact pair of binoculars. She could easily manage a virus, copy it to dual flashdrives, and let whoever found mission control first plug it home. “But you’re right.” Her eyes flickered between the security cameras, estimating their swaths of coverage, where they would be sitting ducks and where there were dead spots. Both were equally useful. “…Fifteen minutes, tops. Even with all the party traffic, they won’t let something like that go.”

As they surveyed, it became obvious that there was still a lingering unease between them from the night before, and for a long moment Clint didn’t know whether to say anything or not. Emotions were weak.

Natasha had always felt the same. But when she’d woken this morning, the sharp edges of new knowledge had dulled, and her focus on the mission was in the foreground once again. Tasha knew it was better that way, safer that way, and she’d been running contingency plans in her head the whole time she cooked. (If you could call it cooking.) The angles of the building out in the cold had been more than enough to keep her occupied since then.

She was still triangulating when he spoke up, catching her offguard.

“I miss the beach.”

It was a twofold sentence. A complaint at the fact that they were staring at yet more new snow, bundled up despite the car’s (weak) heater. A hesitant offer to talk somewhere neither had strong connections to.

“Malibu,” she agreed after a long moment. Despite the mission that had led her there, she liked it. It was clean, still. Not like here. Not like a lot of places in their history.

She knew what he was offering, but she wasn’t willing to commit yet. If he needed her to let it go, she would do that, not only because he meant that much to her but because he’d done it several dozen times for her. And if he needed to say something, she trusted that he would, and she would listen.

With that location Clint nodded and the topic was closed, his restlessness abated with the promise of something being done in the future. Even if it didn’t pan out, and it likely wouldn’t, at least there was a well meant promise of resolution.

In the meantime, the mission came first. That was the biggest tragedy with them, that the mission always came first. So she lowered the binoculars, resolutely steering the subject back where it needed to go.

“I’m going to need time to get ready.” Writing the virus was nothing, it was the elaborate grooming she’d have to go through for the gala that was going to take time. “Unless you want to scout on foot…?”

His thoughts turned from preparing what to say, should that beach day come, to what was left to do before the gala.

Grooming for him was easy. A shower, a shave, the easy application of cologne, and the slide on of a suit he didn’t have to pick, primp, or assemble. The image of Donner was easily fit into a garment bag and completed with just a small dose of charm. Twenty minutes tops, thirty if he lingered in the shower, and Clint would be ready for the ball.

“I’m good,” he said, rolling his head to look at her. “We’ve got other things to do.” Like the virus, weapon planning, for him a quick run over of more complex Russian.

He knew Natasha didn’t have it as easy as he did. He’d been made to watch once just what it took to get ready after an especially argumentative conversation about the fundamental difference between men and women’s fashion. Clint hadn’t complained since then.

Even then he shifted a bit at the thought, giving the house another glance. Scouting on foot would be a good idea if they didn’t have complete blue prints. But so far everything seemed to be panning out. Besides, they were skilled at thinking on the fly.

His accent had improved leaps and bounds in the few days they’d been here and a lot of vocab had come rushing back. But if he was going to be reading complex files and folders he needed a refresher. There was no way around it and he’d learned in the past that admitting the faults and preparing for them usually ended better than hoping they wouldn’t be an issue at all. A lesson that was common sense perhaps, except for the fact that Clint was well aware of how blind his own pride could be.

With a last bite from his now cold oatmeal he put the car into gear and let the tires spin a bit over the snow. They were at least a block away, jammer firmly checked into the ‘on’ position before Clint spoke again. “Blueprints show an office in the north wing and the master bedroom in the south. Thinkin’ those two are the more likely.”

He doubted he’d find anything in the master bedroom. But it had happened on occasion and it was more likely than the formal parlour. Particularly since Durchenko’s wife was the socialite type with people over constantly.

After a moment, he glanced sideways at Tasha. “Think it’s worth goin’ after Korostav’s wife?”

Natasha didn’t say anything. If it were anyone else, she would wonder if he wasn’t just asking to press her buttons, but it was Clint, and the question was fair; Alina was arguably the more valuable of the two.. Even if she wasn’t running the show, she had the technical knowledge.

“If you can manage it without blowing your cover,” she replied in Russian, knowing he needed the practice. “She isn’t interested in me, I think we’ve already established.” The edges of her mouth curled up into a tight, cruel smile as she remembered the look the woman had given her in the restaurant their first night. As far as Tasha was concerned, she got what she deserved.

They rode back to the safehouse in silence, and as soon as they returned, she ensconced herself at the laptop. A half hour later she had twin flash drives loaded with a virus that would look like a software crash; it was easier to sort out, but it might not raise alarms when it was found.

She set them aside, heading to her bedroom to get ready. It was a long process, but men like Korostav had expectations, and the more she exceeded them, the more captivated he would be. And the more captivated he was, the safer Clint would be. It was a twisted logic, but she’d always been one for doing whatever was needed.

She took her time in the shower, savouring the downtime while she could, knowing her partner would keep busy in his own way through all of it. Half an hour later, legs were shaved and hair was shampooed, and she folded a regulation towel around herself as she pored over the formalwear she’d brought. Her choices were slim, but she was too good not to have noticed where the man’s eyes had rested, and she chose something gold and low cut. It had a fairly tall slit up one side, but Tasha knew it had been chosen because it would still hide a holster.

Two hours of heat processing and makeup later, Tasha stepped out in a simple upsweep. She wore lab-created diamonds at her ears and wrist, keeping her throat bare and the costs for SHIELD down should she lose a piece. And she would, if anything went wrong.

It only took him twenty minutes to get ready. Ten for a shower and shave, ten to pull on the foreign clothes. For a brief moment he looked himself over in the mirror and tried to see what other people saw. A hand ran over a perceived wrinkle in the low tier suit and he wondered how Phil made it look so damn easy, so damn good.

Then again, Clint supposed some people were just born to look good in their own skin. All he would ever see in the mirror was a nineteen year old boy wondering if he’d ever grow up into anything more. It was something he still wondered on bad days.

It was the nine millimeter in his waistband and knife strapped to his shin that had him feeling more comfortable and more like something he knew. With the click of a backup plan into the false heel of his shoes - the kids in R&D were getting good at this gas stuff - he stepped out the door he feeling much more the part of S.H.I.E.L.D. spy.

Her heels had ankle straps and steel-reinforced stilettos; she could run and even fight in them if she had to. (And she often did.) She slipped on her hollow ring — the Red Room themselves had taught her the value of poisons, though they had been far from her specialty — and her slimline thigh holster left an elegant Beretta strapped between her legs. She could feel the barrel of it when she walked, but it was a small price to pay; it was hidden past the line of propriety, even where security frisks were concerned. It wouldn’t be found.

“Ready when you are,” she purred as she tossed him a flashdrive, already sliding into Tipper’s skin.

It was Donner who reached out for Natasha’s arm, linking them effortlessly and with a fond crick of his neck. That part was easy, at least. “Feel like I’m under dressed.” The flashdrive was easily palmed into his pocket, right next to the first of two sets of picks.

The watch on his wrist held the other set of picks and it flashed seemingly with purpose as smiled at Tasha. This was the moment when sentiment should break through, Clint’s mind supplied. It’s what normal people would fall back on.

But Clint was used to life without a net and sentiment was just that: something needed when uneasy about what was to come. And while Clint didn’t always have an answer as to whether he would become something more than a weapon, there was a certain knowledge in knowing that he had least had a definition.

It was the best people like he and Tasha could ask for some days.

They were in the car before either of them knew it, Clint the one with his hands on ten and two not because it was his turn to drive but because it was expected. Backup plan C was hidden away under the false floor -- an M4 carbine, extra ammo, a set of throwing knives that had seen use by both their hands (he still mourned the sixth knife, lost years ago in Bogota), and a flare that had become standard issue these days after South America. If you asked Clint, however, the deadliest weapon - and the most reliable - in the car was watching the snow fall out of the passenger window.

Not for the first time, Clint was glad she was on their side.

“We’ll keep appearances up first.” She spoke softly, her gaze trained on the endless white outside the glass. “Let them see us together, so that they notice when we separate.” She nodded decisively. “That’s when Korostav will make his move. If you can distract Alina, so much the better.”

She was only barely able to keep from grinding her teeth at the suggestion. Normally she didn’t let minute mission necessities like that get to her — how could she, after the tactics she’d employed over the years? — but this trip was like touching a raw nerve.

“Gun at your back, in the waistband?” She already knew the answer. Holsters were for lesser men. “I’ve got the Beretta on my left thigh, high on the inside. It’s holstered for you to grab it with your right.”

She could draw it either way, she’d long been ambidexturous, but if things went to hell in a handbasket, she usually holstered her weapons in a way that let him draw them, too. That extra second where they could look like just another couple copping a feel could save them, she knew all too well.

“Back left,” he confirmed, though he knew she knew. “Left shin’s got the four inch, picks in the watch and right shoe.” Being ambidextrous certainly had specific advantages, and while Clint still tended to favor his left he had to admit that knife work with his right was superb, a fact Natasha knew well. 

He briefly thought about flicking his eyes over the issue of Alina. Instead they stayed straightforward. It was unfortunate that it was a related issue to their earlier…whatever it had been (he was loathe to call it a fight).

But such was life and though the topic threatened to bubble up in a dark pop of guilt he forced it down. Not now, probably not later either.

They didn’t speak after that, minds settling further into the complicated labyrinth of self, identity, and weapon. It was easy to get lost amongst the distinctions, and sometimes it was useful to, necessary even. Knowing which part and when had been one of the first lessons Clint learned when he met Natasha, and it was one of the most valuable he’d learned since.

When they pulled up to the place, it was unmistakable that it was the right one. Luxury cars lined up in rows, and a smart valet obviously knew better than to step forward as Clint turned into the parking lot. Women in furs and jewels accompanied men in a loose variation of suits, and Tasha tilted her chin up minutely in an affectation of wealth.

Donner was the one who opened the car door and escorted Natasha in. He was all charms and smiles, smile straight and meek and every bit forgettable. No roguish charm tonight. Tonight’s star was the woman on his arm who was already drawing looks. If all went well, he would be just a face amongst many, forgotten by the time eyes turned away. Meanwhile, her metallic heels bit into the thin layer of snow on the obviously recently cleared carpark as they whisked their way to the entrance.

As usual, her weapons weren’t found, but she knew better than to allow herself a tiny smirk of satisfaction. Pride was a lot harder to win than that; it was a lesson she’d carried with her for many years.

Her eyes surveyed the room, finding Korostav and his wife quite easily. As if he felt her eyes on him, he soon turned to meet her gaze, and she held it for a short second before lowering her eyes coquettishly and turning her attention back to Clint. Knowing they were very definitely putting on a show now, she demurely offered him her hand in an invitation to dance.

Clint just _knew_ that Korostav had already found them by the way Natasha’s head turned, lips brushing his ear. Training kept him from glancing over, though it was his own instinct that had him tilting his head a bit to speak.

“One o’clock?” Hawkeye reminded him that James Bond had been overrated.

At her nod, he took her hand. And if he got a bit of glee in spinning her away, his back to Korostav, well, that was his business.

The dance was a waltz – it was always a waltz, rich people were so fucking predictable sometimes – and he knew enough to look like the young money Donner was. He laughed at his own clumsiness and squeezed Natasha’s hand. If Tipper was placating with her smiles, well, Donner never noticed.

Hand on Tipper’s hip, he leaned in by her ear in an intimate gesture. “Two dances, a drink, then if he hasn’t come we’re screwed.” He was sure it wouldn’t take much longer than that for Korostav to steal Tipper away. Not with the way he felt eyes boring into the back of his head.

For her part, it was easy enough to look like she was enjoying herself as they wafted around the dance floor. There was no one who knew her body like Clint did — not even the scientists who’d engineered her in so many ways — and they moved effortlessly. So much the better; she knew that Korostav wasn’t the only one watching her right now.

When the second dance ended, she knew from the way that no one had cut in that everyone else had noticed Korostav’s eyes in her, too. Being the boss had its perks, it seemed.

Playing the part of new wife, Tasha curled suggestively into Clint’s arms, her fingers skating the top edge of his belt just in case. She snagged a flute of champagne from a passing waiter with her free hand, the tip of her nose skimming the angle of his jaw as she ghosted her lips next to his ear.

“See you on the other side, cowboy.”

She pulled back to catch his eyes in what would look like unspoken suggestion to anyone else. Invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking her in the eye at that moment — anyone who wasn’t him — her gaze carried something like an apology.

A part of Clint always hurt at how well they fit together. But another part of him asked whether they fit because they were made to or they fit because they’d molded to the only thing that had been there. He didn’t know, though it wasn’t hard to feign the forlorn look of a lover as Natasha side stepped neatly away with a wiggle, and the smile he gave her was tinged with the same kind of regret that her look held.

She didn’t feel remorse for the life she’d chosen, of course, or for what she was about to do. She certainly didn’t pity herself. Natasha had an exceedingly rare skill set that encompassed several moral grey areas. Or what would have been moral grey areas for normal people, anyway; oftentimes, morals were a luxury in her line of work. She had certain beliefs, but they’d been largely forged by what others had engineered her to do before she’d had a choice, so they were anything but unbiased.

They didn’t matter now. There was work to do.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hot water doesn't always make tea.

Natasha excused herself with a wiggle and a wave, slipping into the restroom under the guise of retouching her makeup. She made it quick, reaching up to turn her comm on, and when she stepped back into the main room, Korostav wasn’t at his table.

Which was of course because he was leaning against the wall, his dark suit blending in with the shadows.

“I take it back. Gold is your colour, beautiful.”

Tipper smiled, and Natasha shifted subtly, making sure her stance didn’t leave her too open.

“I’m glad you think so.” She smiled invitingly, toasting him with her flute.

* * * * *

Clint turned and moved toward the banquet table, nodding to a few faces here and there and pretending that he was supposed to be here and not that he got invited less than twenty-four hours ago.

His hand snagged a champagne flute of his own before he flittered over to the food spread. A nose wrinkle was given at the shrimp, what looked like sushi, and the oysters. Besides, being picky gave him a good few moments to case the grand hall. Plenty of entrances, plenty of cameras, and plenty of black suits that didn’t quite blend in with their stiffness and straight backed walk that meant guns under their jackets. There were at least six of them, though the one by the stairs was a bit distracted by a glint of gold.

Natasha. Clint felt that familiar warm rush that he banished with a shake of his head. Hawkeye was the one who finished inventory, pleased that his preliminary report revealed nothing to worry about.

Which left the directive: information gathering.

His eyes scanned the crowd, finding Alina immediately in the pinched look and defensive stance she had. She was talking with what could have been a diplomat or a friend, Clint didn’t know. What he did know was that Alina wasn’t talking, or listening, or eyeing anything but Korostav and Natasha.

It left a good window which he took, sliding away. He couldn’t outright disappear, which was why he took the hand of a younger woman on his way across the floor.

“Dance with me?” Though it wasn’t a question.

Fortunately, the girl in the fur lined dress had no problem saying yes. She spun with him, batting eyelashes. “You have a charming accent.”

“Unfortunately, that’s just me destroying a wonderful language.” It was textbook Bond shit. He was going to have to talk to someone about collaborating on a movie script.

“Are you visiting?” At his nod, “What for?”

Clint smiled and leaned in a bit, a hand wandering a bit further down as their backs turned. “Because I heard the women were beautiful here.”

Before she could splutter about his wife, Donner came back and gave her an apologetic smile. “Forgive me, I’m forward. My wife is from here.” And as if regretting the action he backed away with a bob of his head, disappearing into the crowd.

It was Hawkeye who managed to make it up the stairs, strolling behind an older couple who stopped to admire the art on the wall. He couldn’t tell Monet from Monat (and he was still sure someone was just shitting him about that) but he could tell a convenient wall to blend in with. When eyes searched over him, they only saw three art connoisseurs. A glance back and they would have had to think hard over whether there had been three or two the whole time.

The carpet dulled sounds and only the soft murmurs of art onlookers managed to drift to his ears. But Hawkeye knew what he was looking for and the double doors of polished mahogany were it. They were easy to find, bordered by an elaborate panel of redwood. What was harder to find was the camera watching it.

A frown was pointed at an ugly painting of some fat, old guy (Clint shuddered to think it was Durchenko’s relative) though really the gaze was meant for the circular disk in the ceiling above. How to get around it?

Locks were easy but his hand moved and closed around the USB drive.

Yet before he could even look to start guessing as to where the surveillance system was an angry voice caught his attention. Moving further down the hall to glance at a statue with another couple, his eyes slid over to the stairs to watch Alina storm up, Durchenko not far behind.

“Madam, I assure you-“

Alina was in no mood, however, for assurances. “I want to see them in my hand, right now.”

“The party-“

“Is less important than what you were hired to do!”

Durchenko didn’t look happy, but Alina was unhappier still, which was why a key slid into the office lock, clicked, and admitted the two. With a small, thoughtful wrinkle, Clint moved to wait for his moment.

* * * * *

The USB floated free at the bottom of Natasha's wristlet purse; she’d thought she might have a few free seconds before she orchestrated an encounter with their mark, but she’d underestimated his eagerness. Hopefully Clint was having better luck.

Korostav leaned in, his breath washing over her bare collarbone, and things got vastly more interesting.

…Which was to say, the barrel of an elegant 9mm nudged her in the ribs.

“I’m sure that’s unneccessary,” she breathed in Russian, her green eyes reflecting as close to innocent as they ever got. She was instantly aware of the presence of a hired thug behind her, at 6 o’clock directly.

“I’m not so convinced,” Korostav deadpanned, and with his free hand he smoothed down her ribs, the flat of her stomach, the small of her back, no doubt checking for weapons. His eyes glinted with what almost looked like glee when he didn’t find any, prompting his hand to dip lower, the material of her dress rucking around his wrist as he delved between her legs.

“Please, my husband will see us here, we should —” She promptly dropped her act as his hand lifted high enough to grasp her Beretta, pulling it soundlessly from its holster.

Korostav’s grin widened, dark and dirty as he flicked off the safety, holding her at gunpoint with not only his Heckler and Koch, but her own firearm as well. He nodded, nearly imperceptibly, at the thug behind her, and she felt the unyielding muzzle of something less streamlined press against her spine.

“We should adjourn to the parlour, I think you were saying.” The man looked like the cat who’d caught the canary. But if she was headed for the parlour, it meant the goods were in the bedroom. Even they wouldn’t be so stupid as to escort her to whatever they were hiding.

“Yes.” She dropped Tipper’s affectations, giving him a tight smile. “Let’s.”

It was still a party, and the two men were discrete as they escorted her. She let her hips swing, knowing most of what was going through the minds of the party guests right now and not minding a lick of it.

The heavy French doors closed behind them, and Korostav wasted no time popping her in the mouth with the butt of her own gun. Somehow, it was oddly reassuring that he had no qualms about holding back because she was a woman.

* * * * *

Part of what sucked about stake outs was listening in on the other end while Natasha actually got shit done. Granted, he’d gotten to hear more girl talk than any guy ever, and that provided a certain advantage when it came to understanding who to hit on in the pack at the bar, but, as in the case now, while he looked at some artistic rendering of either breakfast or a landscape (he wasn’t sure, stupid impressionistic pieces), it was Natasha who was earning her keep.

He had to smile at the smoothness between the two. Few could argue the effectiveness of Tasha’s skills and in the rare cases he got to listen fully, or even better watch, he always found himself more and more aware just how out of their league even their best at S.H.I.E.L.D. was when compared to her. Still, he should have seen it coming, and even over the din of party he heard the difference in tone and the snick of a gun.

He sighed, causing the woman next to him to nod in agreement - the painting was magnificent. If only she knew.

Mentally Hawkeye calculated where the parlor was, remembering it vaguely as being on the bottom floor. They’d listed it as being a possible place to look, though they’d rated it low on the importance scale. Turns out they’d been right, which was always satisfying to find out.

He turned then, willing Korostava and Durchenko to hurry up and leave. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Natasha to get herself out. It was that he didn’t trust Korostav to not make it hurt. And Clint knew himself and knew that the longer the screams went on the harder it was to stay on course.

Clint was a weak man in that way.

Just then the study clicked open, ejecting a sweating Durchenko and Korostava, who looked like she was keeping it together by the tip of her teeth. Something was stirring the air, and Clint had a good idea it wasn’t just unhappiness in marital bliss.

Using the cover of a strolling couple, he moved quickly and managed to get a finger into the door before it shut. The noise of it closing behind him, a fraction later than it should have, was drowned by the greetings being tossed about as casually as the dancing had been.

“I’m in.”

The office was quiet, overstuffed with bragging artifacts of money to the point of put on, and smattered here and there with technology. Hawkeye pinpointed the fourteen items that would make the best weapon within a span of ten seconds. Two escape plans were made in another five. And by the time he reached the desk he’d already deduced that it would be the most logical place to start about seven seconds ago.

* * * * *

“It’s good to meet you, Natalya.”

Despite the three firearms trained on her, it seemed that they weren’t immediately interested in shooting. That was good. Not that she wouldn’t likely survive it, but it hurt, and she preferred to avoid it.

“That’s not my name anymore.”

Her sass earned her another crack, backhanded this time, bolstered by the weight of a stainless steel gun, and blood ran from her split lip. It was probably a bad sign when she could feel the split with her tongue; it would need stitches. Despite that, she stared stoically at the man as he closed in on her personal space. She wasn’t worried. Two men with guns was hardly a challenge, and Clint was here. The adrenaline spiked, but fear didn’t.

“Where’s your little bird, hmmm? With the arrows? Is he off dancing with my wife? Whore.” He spat on her, and she didn’t so much as blink. “She deserves what she gets.”

Natasha cocked an eyebrow. There was trouble in marital paradise. Colour her surprised.

* * * * *

Clint tried hard to ignore the sounds buzzing in his ear. “Little bird? Please. Mother fuckin’ condor to you, buddy.” Which, ok, didn’t fit with his moniker. But they all knew sized counted with these people.

The computer was encrypted, no surprise, so he abandoned it in hopes of something paper. The right side drawer was uneven from the others, so he started there.

* * * * *

“So why don’t you tell me where the briefcase is, hmmm?” Korostav pretended to contemplate the Beretta. It was a beautiful weapon. “Or we’ll… how do you say… persuade you?”

Natasha didn’t say anything, stoic despite the running commentary on her comm. Trust Clint to choose this moment to defend his manhood.

But she'd learnt long ago that threats were only words, and torture was only pain. Her body was engineered to withstand so much, and her mind had been trained to follow. Besides, she knew that the man in front of her was too partial to do his job correctly — even now he had his eyes on the neckline of her dress — and she was confident this wouldn’t be her worst mission.

“Nothing to say?” Their mark paused for effect, clearly thinking he had the upper hand. When she still didn’t respond, he gave a nod to the thug behind her, who immediately wrenched her arms back behind her, tightening a pair of handcuffs on her wrists, which he then secured with another pair of cuffs to the thick slats of the wooden chair he pushed her into.

The pistol in front of her waved at her face — why was it always the face? She could work with sprains, lacerations, burns, but a split lip or worse, a black eye, put her down for a few days. Concealer was a dead giveaway when you were an undercover agent.

“She doesn’t even like you, does she?” There was no pity in her voice as she regarded the expectant Korostav. “A KGB arranged marriage, I presume?”

The man pistol whipped her again, forward and then back, and she was vaguely aware of the pleased noise the hired hand behind her made. She couldn’t hold back a hiss of pain, and her vision went the slightest bit hazy, which was no good; she wasn’t any help if she wasn’t conscious. As she trained her gaze on the man in front of her, straightening her features back into a carefully schooled mask of apathy, she realised one cheekbone might be cracked.

* * * * *

Practice was what made it easy for Hawkeye to ignore the sounds in his ear, even if a crack that signified the jaw bone made him wince in sympathy. Natasha would be fine; she was always fine, even without her freakish ability to heal so quickly. But it didn’t make it easier to sit there and count out the hours in medical by sound alone.

Particularly when his search was turning up nothing.

“Fucking assholes, could at least make it easy after makin’ me wear a suit,” Clint murmured, both for his own release and for Tasha’s benefit. A frustrated huff signalled he needed the extra time.

* * * * *

“Apologies,” Tasha murmured, completely for Clint’s benefit. It was a reassurance and a centering agent.

“Not worth the breath you speak them with,” Korostav responded, mistakenly thinking the sentiment was for him. Apparently inspired, he reached out and wrapped thick fingers around her windpipe, crushing easily. Natasha didn’t fight it, didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing any panic flare in her eyes, which was what she knew he was waiting for. He held on for a long, silent moment, his gaze appraising and grudgingly impressed. He would not kill her.

“My wife is of no consequence to me. She is a cold scientist, and nothing more.” Natasha knew the rage in his voice, though. He’d been rejected and it was a sore point. Russian egos.

“When I let go, you have 10 seconds to answer me. Where. is. the suitcase?”

* * * * *

The drawer had been emptied, there was no question, particularly as the opened drawer was in disarray while the others belied hours of OCD and/or a meticulous mind. Clint’s quick search around the room revealed numerous things more expensive than he cared to think about. But there were no hidden lairs with book activated doors, no secret drawers, and the carpet had nothing but ugly (no doubt expensive) wood underneath it. Even the personal items scattered throughout were as impersonal as they got, even if it did answer the age old question of who bought the expensive shit in the airport.

Annoyance billowed through him, released only with a flare of his nose. Fine. Plan A was still in effect, it was just time to move on to the master bedroom. With a lovingly placed bug underneath the desk -- it never hurt to try, right? -- he left as silently as he’d slipped in.

There were decidedly less people upstairs when he emerged. For a moment Clint wondered if perhaps people had wised up. The art wasn’t that good, for god’s sake, not when there were mini-cubes of cheese to be eaten.

Clint suddenly realized that it wasn’t the cheese, however, but the two suits on the stairs that accounted for the empty halls. They locked eyes and he knew it was over even before he could hold his hands up in mock surprise.

“Hey there, fellas, was just-“ The equally fake explanation never even made it out before he was herded down the hall and into the master bedroom down the hall. At least there was that, right? “Mind watchin’ the suit? It’s kind of a big deal.”

He wasn’t too surprised to find that it wouldn’t be a one-on-two session as he was half dragged inside.

The room was practically two rooms in one, with a receiving area complete with fireplace, desk, and mini bar. Durchenko was sitting at the desk and sweating profusely, looking more the part of screwed over businessman than party patron. It just confirmed Natasha’s summation of the man’s place in the scheme, though it still didn’t clarify exactly what this whole thing had been about.

That Clint hoped to learn from the long form of Alina Korostava. She wasn’t beautiful, not up close and certainly not when she scowled. Yet beauty meant nothing when there was a loaded gun, which was where Korostava had the advantage on Clint.

Donner kept his hands up. “Uh, hi.” Hawkeye noted the glass bowl, bookend, and charcoal poker within arm’s reach.

Brown eyes looked him over, snapping up with the same force as the judgment rolling from her stance. “I expected more.”

Like that was original. Clint just shrugged out of the first grunt’s hold and noted the second grunt’s disappearance to guard the door. Donner slipped away. “So did I.” A lie, but confidence went a long way. Particularly when there was someone patting you down like the damn TSA. He wasn’t at all surprised when his gun and knife ended up in the grunt’s hands.

“Alina-“ A glare cut off Durchenko, who looked between the door, the grunt, Clint, and Korostava, and wisely decided the best way out of this was behind the desk and quiet.

Clint and Hawkeye had to give him props. Smart man. Though perhaps not too smart in the way Durchenko was hastily putting files into a manila envelope. In plain sight.

“Where’s your partner?” The way Korostava stood radiated power, feet firmly planted, shoulders square. Yet the halter-top piece she wore was the wrong cut, even Clint knew that, and her weight was too far forward on the balls of her feet. She wasn’t used to high heels.

Interesting.

“What partner?” He shifted, as if to step forward, and wasn’t surprised when the gun was raised. Nor was he surprised when her stance wobbled slightly.

“You know damn well who.” The aggravation there was clear, bitterness deep enough to imply infidelity was perhaps a shade too close to normal. “The slut in the dress worth more than her.”

He wished Natasha could hear the insult in person instead of over the comm. Particularly since the punch line was standing right in front of him. “My wife?”

The quip earned him a snort. “She’s no more your wife than you are Russian.”

Ouch. “I can see why they paired you guys up…” The snort that went with that was purely for Natasha’s sake. And they thought they were dysfunctional. “And here I was lookin’ to have a good time tonight.”

“And I am looking for my briefcase.” The safety had been off for a while but Korostava made it a point to click it against the handle. A reminder. Just as the sudden beefy hand on his shoulder was. “Either you or the Black Widow has it. Where is it?”

The name still had power, Clint was pleased to note, by the way Durchenko and the bodyguard behind him glanced at each other.

The trick to figuring the way out of these situations was time. Fortunately, she’d left a weakness open that Clint knew well. “Didn’t know you knew each other. She still a pin-up in Bad Guy’s Weekly? Cause your husband was all over her like a two page spread.”

“She is well-known amongst those of us left.” The clipped tone and Korostava’s withering look were enough to clue in Clint to just what kind of ‘knowing’ there was. Or, likely, wished there was.

It was also useful to note that ‘those of us left’ meant something was going on within the organization itself.

“She’s hard to forget,” he said carefully, ignoring the smell of cheap aftershave radiating from the grunt. The hold on his shoulder was breakable, so long as he stayed still now. “Pretty sure Korostav’s gonna remember tonight…and tomorrow morning in the shower.”

He saw her grip tighten and his muscles tensed, ready to duck, dodge, and roll. But just as quickly as the muscles contracted they released and a tense smile spread across Korostava’s face instead. “My husband deserves what he gets.”

“Pretty harsh.”

“He’s Russian. He’s used to it.”

That alone made Clint’s mouth quirk a bit. “And yet you’re still that against us givin’ him a taste of humble pie?”

“Unfortunately I was young, and foolish-“

“Just when you were young?” The hand on his shoulder squeezed and Hawkeye pretended like that didn’t hurt his rotator cuff a bit.

“This goes beyond him. And me.”

“Yeah, I gathered that.” Hawkeye’s fingers itched to move. Yet he stayed his motions – just a few more moments. “Question is, how deep into the Red Room we talkin’ here? Ankle dip or shit storm style?” There was no denying that’s what this was. Not anymore.

Korostava just smiled. Which should have been a clue. Hawkeye just wished he had caught on before he was popped one in the jaw. He went down. A hard kick to the ribs (always the fucking kidneys) had him rolling and he caught a look on Durchenko’s face that indicated the guy had perhaps gotten in over his head too quickly. Clint wished he had the attention span to laugh. It was always the same story, repackaged, in the end.

He stayed on his hands and forearms – the click of a gun safety behind him good incentive - not at all sorry for spitting blood on the carpet as his head rang and ribs ached. The smirk he’d been planning, however, was superseded by the searing pain of a shoe grinding into his wrist.

Korostava smiled at his scream. “The briefcase. Where is it?”

* * * * *

Natasha could hold her breath for a very long time before she blacked out, so it wasn’t so much the lack of oxygen, but Korostav’s overzealous grip that bothered her. Still, it gave her ample time to listen to the happenings over the wire. She knew Clint snarked heavy when he was thinking on his feet, and when other voices joined in alongside his, she could piece together what was happening upstairs.

Though they seemed to know quite a lot, Natasha was almost pleased; it was likely the Red Room had supplied Alina and her husband with the proper intel and the woman hadn’t quite done her homework. It was one thing to know the legend, quite another to understand what Natasha was capable of now that she was operating on something other than blind orders.

In the next moment, Tasha knew that the woman — mistaken though she may be on some points — had obviously got to Clint, because she heard a noise of real pain, and then a few moments later a shot. Knowing it was only bad if it was the other way around, Natasha nonetheless made a decision to cut negotiations short in favour of backing up her partner

“Kappa,” Natasha spoke almost distractedly to the expectant Korostav as he took his hand away, her voice a wheeze as she listened to the fray on the other end. Undercover was no longer an option, and now the entire mission depended on what they could each get out of their respective captors.

“Pardon?” Korostav glared at her, sure he hadn’t heard her right. She stared a hole in his head, regulating her breathing until she heard the laboured ease of Clint’s tone speaking to someone in the room, presumably Durchenko.

“Closer.” She managed to croak, tilting her head to stretch her neck and wincing at the apparent tenderness. “We put it —”

As soon as he was in range, hanging on her every word, Natasha bashed her head into his nose. His eyes closed instinctively, one hand coming up to protect his face, the other holding her Beretta out in a blind holdup. His hand shook, but as blood streamed from his nose she figured that was probably fair. His shot went wild, the slug sinking into a probably priceless bookcase across the room. The thug behind her moved, obviously unsure of what to do, and Natasha took advantage of his hesitation to hop backward, both feet planting on the chair. In the next second, she’d swung her cuffed hands beneath her heels, landing on the ground as the chair followed the momentum of the swing. Ignoring the harsh bite of metal against the fine bones of her wrists, she swung the chair at Korostav, who went down like a sack of bricks. The impact shattered the back of the chair, and she pulled free of the wood, swinging her cuffed hands at the solar plexus of the stunned guard. He doubled over just in time to meet her knee, and Natasha took the moment to pop open her ring, holding it beneath the man’s nose before carefully capping it again.

The guard was unconscious before she’d had a chance to stand.

* * * * *

It hurt. A lot. And there was a flash of fear at the fact that Clint's hands and wrists were his livelihood. Yet the point of the heel driving through the top of his palm gave him an idea.

A stupid idea, but an idea nonetheless.

He looked up and gave her the patented, Clint Barton smirk. “Nice shoes.”

Only Hawkeye saw it coming, which was good. Just like it was good that his left hand had always been the more dominant of the two. It meant that it was used to doing intricate work, like grabbing the other heel and jerking hard on the stiletto. God bless fashion in that sense.

The real problem wasn’t so much in the foot on his right hand. That regime of terror toppled when Korostava fell. What was the issue were the two guns. If he’d been restrained from behind, it wouldn’t have worked. Fortunately, the grunt behind him was using the hands free, point-and-shoot method of containment at the moment, meaning a kick to the gut had the man woofing and reflexively pointing up.

A flash of heat and powder washed over Hawkeye’s left cheek and he felt the familiar singe of a gun powder burn. But there was a hole in the floor and not his face, and while the jerk to the left had exasperated the pain in his right hand, well, brains over bones.

The roll he executed would have made any acrobat jealous and by the time he was on his feet Durchenko was just starting the fish impersonation.

“Can I borrow this?” He ignored the blubbering in favor of the paperweight on the desk. It was hideous, but it didn’t matter. A step over felt long fingers crunched as they reached for the pistol on the floor, while a sweep of the paperweight against an equally ugly temple felled the grunt.

The gun on the floor left marks on the exposed hardwood as it slid, but veneer be damned as Hawkeye slid it into his hand. The knowledge that a new round was already in place and aimed at Korostava’s eye made Hawkeye feel better about ruining what was surely an antique in the Russian world of opulent flooring.

Pure adrenaline was what gave Hawkeye the ability to keep his right hand curled around the paperweight. Smug satisfaction was what gave him the need to look at Durchenko. “Those files now, please. Thanks.”

It was without surprise that Durchenko folded like a deck of cards, handing over the envelope with eyes wide at the guard on the floor.

Korostava hissed at the older man, and it was a wonder her hair didn’t stand straight out as she did. “Traitor!”

“Oh come one now. Are you really that surprised?” His own voice was surprisingly chipper as he let the paper weight drop with a loud THUNK on the desk. Clint didn’t bat an eye when it left a dent. “Besides, we all know if he wasn’t one now you were gonna make him one later.”

He rolled his head a bit, feeling a knot forming in his neck at the tension. An eat-shit grin was given to Durchenko. “Cool friends you got here, bro.”

It was obvious the weasel of a man had no clue how to respond, but it didn’t matter. Hawkeye had what they needed and it was time for an exit strategy. “As fun as this has been kids…”

A voice filtered into his ear.

_“Repeat: Hawkeye, Widow, rendezvous point Kappa in 0030, request extraction.”_

God bless you, Tasha. “I never got to try out that buffet. So if you’ll excuse me.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pinup and the cowboy tally the score.

Clint had been wondering if perhaps this wasn’t too easy when Korostava moved. She was shaky with her left hand, as most right dominants were, but not shaky enough to be unable to put a hand up to her ear, activating something.

“We’ve been compromised!”

The shout had Durchenko moving for a drawer, snapped out of his shock though still fumbling, even as the door opened and the other grunt peered in. Hawkeye had the gun, but only the one hand.

Definitely his cue to go.

He moved fast, a testament to hours of training and years of the acrobatic lifestyle. The gun was fired with frightening precision at Durchenko’s head. Half an inch lower and the man would be dead instead of ducking. Another shot was spent grazing Korostava’s leg, just in case. All the time there was shouting in Russian he couldn’t follow because fuck that shit. It was hard enough listening normally. They’d be saying nothing worthwhile now.

His right hand was good for nothing at the moment. Fortunately, the grunt relied so heavily on brawn that it was a matter of subterfuge to get him down. He’d thank Phil for showing him that one later.

* * * * *

There was no way she was going to get through the party looking like she did, blood dripping down her chin and the right side of her face obviously swollen, so she tucked the magazines from the Russian guns into the elastic of her holster, plucked her Beretta from Korostav’s limp fingers, and slid out the window feet first.

“Outside lawn, east window. There’s a drainage spout you can climb down if she... if you can't make the jump.” She hesitated, wiping away the blood on her lips with a bruised wrist. Extraction first, triage second.

“Copy that. West wing headed east bound now. Package in hand.” He could hear scattered panic drifting from up the stairs and it took another dodge, in step, groin jab, and clean gunshot to the shoulder of another grunt to make his way to where he needed.

He was just lucky Natasha had the perimeter set. How long it would last, he didn’t know. All they needed was enough time for him to make it down.

Easy.

A spare bedroom gave him an east side window. The three seconds he took to lock the door were perhaps wasted, but better safe than sorry. Particularly as he could feel his wrist swelling as he moved. There was a stab of fear at that, but he forced it down and reminded himself that Natasha had had worse in Warsaw before. If she could do it, so could he. (Phil would probably kill him for that, but whatever.)

File in his teeth, holstering the gun once more, he unlocked the window and looked down. A shock of red hair was just visible at the perimeter and it made his mouth tighten in a smile around the envelope.

“…And I was only ever a pinup in your filthy imagination, Barton.”

Beretta in hand, already securing the area for his exit, her teeth were tinged red with her own blood as she smiled up at him.

Clint would have laughed if he could have. Instead, he snorted, a labored sound eased out through concentration on the task at hand. But a laugh of sorts nonetheless.

With a heave that made his wrist complain at the use, he swung around the window’s siding for the pipe. Ice under his fingers made him shiver, but the cold sheen helped him slide down like a fireman and almost before he knew it his legs were on solid ground.

One guard rounded the corner just before Clint’s boots hit the ground. From the way he started, Tasha doubted he’d been expecting to find him, but he was a quick thinker, already reaching for his gun.

She took out his left kneecap, and wondered why she’d bothered with the silencer on the Beretta. The gun may have been quiet, but the guard’s howl was not.

Turning, his gun was out before he was even facing her. He smiled, then spat the folder out into his hand. “Best Miss December ever.”

A quick glance assured him she was ok. Blood, bruises, her head was tilting as if to alleviate pressure, and one wrist seemed to be no better off than his own and the other not far behind. But ok enough for now.

Natasha didn’t meet her hawk's eyes, because they both needed them to stay sharp, but they both remembered the winter they’d spent in Luxembourg. Miss December was putting it lightly.

“Ladies first,” he interjected, indicating she lead the way with a jerk of his head.

In any other circumstances, she'd have given him shit for that crack. He knew she hated it. But right now, all she did was press her back to his. She knew when to step when he did, allowing them nearly 360 degrees of coverage as they moved for the edge of the garden. They would no doubt be expected to go for the car, but Durchenko’s was far out enough that it wasn’t hard to find somewhere to land a Quin out here, and rendezvous point Kappa was only about a mile south. It was a place that even the slums thinned out, reducing the chances of civilians being caught in the crossfire, and since Clint’s legs seemed to be alright, she’d say they were going to make it.

She hadn’t missed his hand, though, and while she couldn’t do anything about it just yet, the onboard med kit had his name on it the second they were tucked away.

It was almost like the waltz from inside. A one-two-three step that spun them in a slow circle through the snow covered drifts that Clint was sure were beautiful gardens in the three months of agreeable weather Russia had. It was too bad they never seemed to come here during those months.

As they moved, Tasha shook her hands roughly to make the still-intact handcuff chain rattle.

“Didn’t have time to search out the key, so if you’ve got any fantasies you never told me about, now would be a good time to keep them to yourself.”

He had to grin at the admonishment, even as his eyes narrowed in on three possible deterrents to their escape. “Who needs fantasies when you’ve got this?”

Which was, of course, the moment he stubbed a toe on a rock. Wonderful.

Stiletto heels did less than nothing for her in this terrain, and by the time they were halfway to the clearing where the floodlights of the Quinjet waited, Natasha's legs were scratched, dirty, and nearly halfway frozen. Which just meant that they matched the rest of her rather well. Unfortunately for accounting, she’d ruined the dress, lost half the (albeit fake) jewelry, and was pretty sure these shoes would never look the same. But there was a reason that inventory had a code for silk ruined by bloodstains — denotation 84.209 — and she knew it was probably already in the computer. She had a bit of a reputation, after all, and not all of it was bullshit.

Clint was marginally more comfortable with the protection his suit provided, though accounting would be thrilled to hear that it was no longer in presentable order. He knew he was doing better than her at any rate, as he’d gotten a glimpse of what should have been gold out of the corner of his eye. It was an ugly shade of chartreuse now.

The jet wasn’t far after that, though, and he could hear the blades before the floodlights hit his vision. Despite the circumstances, there was something about the Quinjet that would always settle something in Clint. He didn’t know whether it was the singular power he felt behind the controls or the sense of importance that came with taking off. Perhaps it was even the smell of aviation fuel, with the light tang so similar to gasoline.

Whatever it was, it was close to a sense of peace. So Clint hung on to it and fired a shot at the guards following. He knew he hit. Then again, he never missed.

The reinforced metal door of the jet swung open, and Tasha shoved Clint none too gently at the opening in retaliation for his earlier crack.

“Ladies first.”

At the shove he stumbled back, landing squarely on his ass and hissing at his hand as he moved to sit up. The brief pain didn’t detract from the look he gave Natasha though. “I changed my mind. Pretty sure you haven’t ever been a lady.”

Natasha’s smile as she turned her face up to him for the briefest of seconds was brilliant, if a little lopsided. Swelling would do that.

“And you’ve never actually been a cowboy.” She waved a hand, and the other one was yanked after it in a rattle of metal. “Semantics.”

He had helped lay fence on a ranch in Texas once, when he was tight on cash and in the hours before the matinee show went live. The hours of sharp barbed wire and dust in his nose brought in a cool $50, which wasn’t a lot anymore but back then had been enough for groceries for a week between Barney and him. It had also, just for a moment, made him feel like something out of a dusty dime store Western, of which he’d never read but only stared at the covers.

A technician bumbled by then, stumbling at the rough take off to take the folder from Clint, and he lost the chance to contest Natasha's assertion. It took a moment to get his hand to uncurl, but eventually the papers were in the hands of people who would know better.

Which left one important, crucial thing to deal with.

His hand reached out to wrap around Natasha’s less hurt wrist. A tug brought her over, the intentions to get her on the ground as well because like hell was Clint getting up. Maybe after the backup fluttering around managed to rustle up Tylenol. She kept her gun trained on the treeline as she folded neatly into the open jet bay, only lowering it when the metal clanged shut behind her, and they were quiet for a long moment. It was Clint who finally broke the silence.

“Know you’re tryin’ to set fashion trends, with the matchin’ red an’ all, but pretty sure this-” He nodded his chin at the cuffs. “-is just goin’ too far. Just too much accessorizin’ goin’ on.” There was a smirk on his face as he dug out his picks from the scuffed up watch. Yet one more thing he’d hear from accounting about.

His wrist could wait (broken, fractured, or not, they had a mission to complete). Nimble fingers pulled out the picks and started getting to work on the cuffs.

With a massive exhale, the back of Natasha’s head hit the floor a little harder than she’d meant for it to as she collapsed next to her partner, eliciting a long and colourful stream of Russian curses. Eventually she did run out of steam, going quiet and still next to him for the space of a few seconds as he snarked on.

“Clint, I can pick these with my toes and a coconut shell, you don’t have to do that.”

It did let her get a good look at his hand, though. She’d seen enough concentrated bruisings like that in her day; that was a heelmark.

_That absolute bitch._

Next time they were sent to this god-forsaken country, she was getting emergency NQK orders in writing. No one would begrudge her a contingency plan, not when the Red Room was involved. They all knew what would happen if they managed to get their hands on her again; re-programming was their specialty. It was her extreme pleasure to always be a few steps ahead of letting that happen, always be a little too well-trained for even their best operatives. It was her best middle finger to Russia.

Rolling her eyes at the man next to her who was studiously ignoring her sound logic, she waited the 17 seconds for the click that signified her release.

“You’re getting rusty,” she groused, reaching a blind hand back for the smooth plastic shell of the medkit. Normally, medical would want to intervene right away, but she and Clint had come to be approached with something like caution, and the team stayed well clear now.

“You smell bad,” was his retort to the accusation, even if he was a bit disappointed in how long it took. Next time.

“You smell worse.” It was the familiar comeback, though really, it could have gone either way.

Hurt pride or not, the ache in his wrist was mounting. So he moved to give Natasha room, ignoring the looks medical was giving them. He didn’t blame them at all. They looked like a mess, what with his wrist an angry dark red and purple (it would be black tomorrow) and Natasha’s face swollen and bloodied. It said something about them when the smell of blood and sweat were so closely associated with Strike Team Delta in Clint’s mind.

Finding what she was looking for with no problem, Tasha grabbed a mediswab and bit the plastic lid off a pre-filled syringe. It was just something to keep the swelling down for the first 12 hours, but she knew they would both be grateful for the added pain relief once the adrenaline rush burnt off.

Her hand rested on his bicep, thumb stroking down his skin. She was incredibly picky about who drugged her and with what, and she had always extended the same courtesy to him.

“Permission to dope?”

He snorted at the question. But he didn’t move his arm. “Sure, but don’t tell the review board otherwise I might not get t’ race tomorrow.” The careless grin hid the wrinkle of his nose at the shot.

There was a glance spared for his wrist. It looked bad and the dying adrenaline was revealing just how closely the visual matched the physical sensation. He’d wrap only after their next orders came through. A wrist brace would do for now.

She stuck him precisely, the butterfly needle as innocuous as possible for an intramuscular shot, but she was already dreading her turn next. Her body metabolised things faster thanks to early biological programming courtesy the Red Room, so she had to dose higher and more often.

If it had been anything other than her face, she probably would have ignored it. Pain meds loosened her normally tight tongue, and in a situation like this she couldn’t exactly control her surroundings. The only thing she could do was lock herself away in the sleeping quarters before she said something she didn’t mean.

But Clint had a different idea, his mind was already glossing over his own medical assessment as he hooked his good fingers around the plastic kit. “Come ‘ere, chipmunk cheeks, let’s at least get the blood off.”

This was how it was with them. A pull-and-push to bring the other back up to their feet. He knew there was talk about the way they moved behind their back. Rumors and ruminations about just what his hand on her cheek meant as he tore open a wet swab with his teeth. About where the line between partner and co-worker started and stopped.

But words didn’t mean much to either of them anymore. They’d stopped meaning anything to Clint when he was sixteen.

Discarding the syringe, Tasha wordlessly acquiesced, settling her chin in Clint’s hand for half a moment, tilting to let him assess the damage. It felt good not to have to hold herself up completely, and she trusted his hands to be helpful and not inquisitive.

“What I would give for a bubble bath,” she deadpanned. It was a joke for now, but when she was alone after debriefing tomorrow or the next day, she would run a bubble bath and sit until the water went cold. It was a good place to heal, and a better place to think.

Clint smiled ruefully at that. He knew the feeling. All he wanted to do was get his hand wrapped, take a hot shower, and curl up somewhere dark and quiet and well-known with a movie in. It was the familiarity of a clacking keyboard and the smell of coffee that he craved, though he said nothing. Not when that safe haven had been the tastefully decorated apartment with the old Russian records years ago. Speaking of which...

“Pretty sure I destroyed some priceless flooring...”

It was a comment that didn’t mean much when overheard, yet there was a running joke involving Strike Team Delta and antiques and the tendency for one or the other to go up in smoke/flame/sparks/chemical vapor. Clint didn’t know when the count had turned into a competition. But it had and he hated that Natasha was still winning. Not that either liked remembering how much that stained glass had ended up being worth.

“Put me down for the destruction of one bookcase and the decimation of one chair, likely irreplaceable.” She rubbed her raw wrists absently, remembering the way it had shattered over Korostav when she’d swung it. “…It was damn sturdy. Shame it had to die.”

His hand hovered by her cheek, undeterred. “Drugs first, or…?”

Her eyes closed as he reminded her she still needed to drug up.

“Yeah.” She sounded years older all of a sudden, and exhausted. Hiking up the slit of her dress, she scrubbed a patch on her thigh clean with an alcohol swab and quickly sank two syringes into the muscle. The effect was nearly immediate, and her head swam a little, but the pulse in her cheek dulled.

He winced a bit at the force with which Natasha depressed the syringes into herself, though he said nothing. Neither of them had much love for the side-effect of painkillers.

But necessity always won out with them. With no idea when they would be called on next this time need won out over instinct.

Still, he frowned as Natasha rose. To all other eyes she was fine, a picture of cool, unphased agent that had Clint almost fooled. Almost.

“I should…” She waved a hand absently, indicating she should go. Cooldown was always rough, and their cover had been blown this time, but at least they’d come back with intel. She tossed a brace into his lap, precise even through the haze of drugs.

“You should let medical at least image that.” She paused for a moment, weighing her need to closet herself away for a little while, but knowing what would always win out over that instinct. “I’ll come with you, if you want.”

The offer prickled at the same protection streak in Clint that was threatening to skip medical all together. He knew Natasha meant the words, would come if he asked without a second thought. But the utterance of those words in of themselves was a sign of just how quickly the painkillers were circulating.

They didn’t need a repeat of Columbia. Clint hadn’t been able to squash those rumors for a week.

“I’ll be fine,” he said quietly, eyes locking with hers. He gave her a small, reassuring smile. His good hand moved to touch her shoulder, to squeeze, to shove lightly, something. Instead, fingers curled around the brace and dropped away. “Not much they can do till we land ‘nyway.”

She knew he didn’t need her. They’d been trained to be, more than anything else, self-reliant. But she also knew that he disliked the med bay almost as much as she did, and she hoped that his refusal was due to his avoidance of the elephant in the room, and not the fact that he no longer found any traces of comfort in her presence.

He stood, sensing the hovering of medical to his right just beyond the steel bulwarks. It was a good excuse to leave things as they were, neutral and with the mission still large in their minds. The existence of Malibu was already starting to nudge at Clint’s consciousness and he could feel his stomach turn at the thought.

In all honesty, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready for it. The thought of losing a person he loved over something doomed was too familiar to go through again.

“Get some rest.” The look she gave tempted him to let motions he’d later regret into motion. His breath caught for a moment and the pause was enough to let muscle memory slip by.

Yet he still found himself saying, ridiculous imitation and all, “I’ll be back.”

Before he could promise more he turned and let medical take the brace and his elbow, admonishing clicks already filling his ear.

She huffed a sound that she hoped could be mistaken for a laugh at his bad Hollywood reference and stalked off for the sleeping quarters, pupils blown slightly under the influence of the painkillers.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Denouement.

It was almost a record for how fast Clint was in and out of medical. Hand elasti-wrapped, severe contusion written neatly in his file and awaiting the more accurate x-ray at the other end of the flight (just to be sure), there wasn’t much to be done for it except keep it elevated with the ice pack applied. Sound advice - it wasn’t the first bruised wrist he’d had after all.

But it was all secondary, momentarily forgotten for the debate on whether or not he should open the door in front of him or just walk away.

Leaving now meant the surety of no questions asked, of not having to choose or explain or disappoint. It would be so easy to ignore it until they both let it die. Yet…while Clint knew he was a selfish man to a large extent, it was Tasha. And while part of him never wanted to let go, another part knew that he owed her whatever she asked of him.

In the end, it took less time in medical than it did for him to finally open the door to the sleeping quarters.

The soft knock was still echoing when he closed the door, eyes squinting in the lowered light until he found her. She didn’t move, and he wasn’t sure if she was awake, though past occurrences said the answer was yes. So he took a chance and moved to sit at the end of the bed.

After a long moment of adjusting the cool pack on his wrist, letting the air settle and the salve on his face cool, he said, “Keep askin’ for purple. Big, bad secret government organization and we still can’t get purple bandages.”

She wasn’t asleep, though she wasn’t above letting everyone else think she was. Right around the time she realised she’d been humming winter songs to herself, the white of snow still blanketing her thoughts, she’d closed her eyes and wished for rest. But wishes didn’t come true in Russia — or in international airspace, it seemed — and besides, she’d heard his steps pause outside the door long ago.

“Next thing you know, they’re going to be keeping lollies on hand for you as well.”

If she could have smiled, she would have. But the drugs were already beginning to wear off, damn her metabolism, and the ache in her cheek threatened to flare at any provocation.

Instead, she tossed the second pillow at his face so he could use it to lean back against and scooted into the corner, wrapping her arms around her knees as she curled up to give him room to stretch. S.H.I.E.L.D. issue bunks were pitifully small, but they’d managed to do more than this on them once upon a time.

She had enough sense not to hold onto her own wrists at least; they’d be bruised for a day or two, but neither was as bad as Clint’s.

And while it didn’t take an idiot to know he hadn’t come for small talk, considering the issues that had been raised in the last week, she doubted the injury was the biggest worry on his mind, but it should have been. She could protect him from her own shortcomings to a point, but if it affected his shooting, she couldn’t spare him his own demons.

Not that she blamed him; she was the same way when her effectiveness was questioned. It might be true that Natasha Romanoff was barely a person, but she was a damn fine agent, and without that paltry comfort she knew she was lost.

With a tilt of her chin, she addressed it with as much nonchalance as she could manage.

“What’s the verdict?”

Clint shrugged at the question, adjusting the pillow behind his head and sighing. “Bruised. They’ll double check when we land.” He gave a short shrug in the dark that was more of an attempt to assure himself than anyone else.

Without his hands he was useless. Just another guy with a gun, and no way of using even that. His whole life had revolved around shooting and without it he wasn’t sure exactly who or what he was anymore. Life without at least that skill wasn’t something he necessarily wanted to try.

Better to be a living weapon than nothing at all.

Natasha didn’t do placation. Sure, there were about a million empty things she could say — that she’d seen worse, that if something wasn’t obviously wrong already the worst they would find on the ground was a hairline fracture — but neither did Clint do blind faith, so none of her words would have done any good.

As if he sensed her war to decide what he needed to hear, he closed his eyes for a moment, head settling into the place between painkillers and ache, and changed the subject.

“You?” He turned his head, eyes slitting open to watch her movements. After a moment he moved to put a hand over hers, thumb stroking gently over her knuckles, straying just short of the wrist to punctuate his question.

“Can get more…” He trailed. Another hit of painkillers wasn’t necessarily advisable for most people. But Tasha wasn’t most people.

“I’m alright.”

That was the truth. She’d certainly been worse, and he’d seen most of it. And while the effects of the drugs were waning, she could still feel them in her head, which she shook once. Her hair, so carefully manicured when they’d left the safehouse that evening, fell around her shoulders in a messy curtain.

“Gonna try and hold out, I think. They’ll dose me when our boots hit the ground, for sure.”

It was the same principle of the Super Soldier Serum, just less… Steve. More streamlined. And it would be nice if it didn’t make painkillers obsolete after 2 hours and require everything but a vodka IV to get drunk.

“You want to keep making small talk, or did you come for a cuddle?”

It was a bad joke, considering what was hanging in the air, but she would blame her lack of judgment on the painkillers and not the way Clint affected her. She didn’t want to push, really… but she _did_ want to sleep, even if it was only a pipe dream at this point. She would let him pretend like this conversation wasn’t happening if that’s what he needed.

Bad joke or not, there was a deeper truth to it in the fact that Clint didn’t cuddle. He wasn’t touchy-feely by nature and physical affection had been foreign enough when young that anything now invoked unease. Clint didn’t do insecurity well.

Yet working with S.H.I.E.L.D. had taught him two things.

One, that there always an exception to the rule, without fail and without question. If there was a rule you could always find someone who fell outside of the parameters. In the end, the same logic applied to your own code of life.

Two, that insecurity or not, sometimes you did things anyway. Whether that was lying on paperwork you swore you’d never lie on or taking a shot without an idea why, you did it.

As a rule, Clint didn’t cuddle. It made him insecure for reasons he didn’t want to admit.

Tasha, however, was his exception and reason.

So at the mention of cuddling he would have huffed and scoffed if it had been anyone else. But because it was Tasha he simply snorted and moved, tossing the pillow back by her head and following its trajectory.

Natasha was not a weak woman, not in any sense of the word. But she had her own exceptions, and Clint was always one of them.

She hadn’t expected him to take her up on the offer. It had been long enough since they’d been physically intimate that she could almost convince herself she was forgetting what it was like. Logically, she knew that had to happen, especially in light of recent knowledge, but she also knew what a hair’s breadth it was from cuddling to remembering, especially when her self-control was even marginally threatened. But she wouldn't deny him this rarity. Not after everything.

He moved to tuck himself in close to Tasha’s curled form. At this altitude, the air in the cabin was cold. But Tasha was warm and this close Clint could smell the sweat and painkillers lingering on her skin. In another time he would have stretched out behind her, buried his nose in her neck and kissed the top of her spine as they warmed the air that much more.

As it was, with that conversation looming in front of them, he only dared to seek comfort with a hand over her drawn up wrists, protective, and a bump of forehead to forehead, tender skin be damned. His worry for her was tangible as he leaned against her — a fact that would have been insulting had it come from anyone else, but she knew the thoughts running through his head were just a mirror of the ones in hers, and today, Tasha was too fair to be the pot calling the kettle black.

“You still smell.”

But there was affection in there, closer to the surface now. And acknowledgement as well of what was likely to come with the way Clint sighed.

She laughed, the air easier once again.

“Fuck you, Agent Barton.”

Her tone was all fondness, no heat, and it felt good to speak in English again. It would go a long way toward shaking off Russia’s cold grip.

Lowering her head sideways to rest on the pillow of his shoulder, she was content to sit there for a long moment, watching the back and forth trace of his fingers. She was still and meditative as he shuffled into position, close but not stifling, familiar but acceptable. Her only movement was to turn her hands beneath his grip, exposing the smooth paleness of her inner wrists to the rasp of his calloused fingers. If it had been anyone else but Natasha, they may have complained about the inherent roughness that came with gripping leather and carbon fiber. Others had certainly commented such in Clint’s time. As it was, hands were the least rough thing in both of their lives.

When she finally spoke, it was less guarded than before, soft and non-accusatory.

“How long?”

He’d known it was coming, some part of him. And yet the suspicion had done nothing in helping him be ready for it. It was only two words. But behind them seemed to hang the entirety of a relationship, carefully balanced and waiting to tip over.

“Don’t know,” he said. Even with his voice lowered Clint felt that the words echoed around the room, drumming into his ears along with his heartbeat.

It was an honest answer though, and the weight came not from shame but the unnerving knowledge that he didn’t know when the line had been crossed.

Clint hadn’t started out under Coulson in S.H.I.E.L.D. and the first year or so of their own partnership had been fraught with miscommunication, misunderstanding, and mistrust. It had been Clint’s last chance and he hadn’t expected to make it. Failure was an inherent part of the Barton family name, after all. And to be truthful he was still waiting to fail.

He hadn’t, though, and had yet to be dropped, in large part thanks to Coulson. There were a lot of things Clint could trace back to the agent: his GED, the seventh grade level book tucked underneath the twist of blankets, the complex hand gestures that saved eighteen words and five seconds of time in the field.

Coulson was competent, confident, and charismatic in the bland, underestimated way of his. And it was exactly within line of what Clint usually fell for.

Could you be in love with two people at once? Clint wouldn’t have been able to tell you once. There had always been just one at a time in his life. Ones that flared and fizzled in months, weeks, sometimes days, leaving hearts, if not more, burned and broken in their wake. In time, it had come to be not worth it.

Until, one day, he’d woken up with a start on the couch in Phil’s (not Coulson’s, Phil’s) office and realized it was twenty minutes past when the clock had last changed. And in that moment he’d realized just how far gone he was.

“’s silly,” he finally said, the words rougher than he wanted. His hand had stilled, but now it started again, stroking gently if not distractedly. “Whole thing is. Like the Borgata all o’er again.”

And perhaps it was an extreme comparison. But it was that mission that Clint bore the scars of deep in his chest, watching the burial of a body seventy years short of a full life. A four foot, two inch tall box of pine to remind him that you couldn’t expect people to change their nature, no matter how badly you wanted them to.

There was a flicker of emotion across her face, the tiniest ripple of the distaste the Borgata had left her with. If she hadn’t been with Clint, it wouldn’t have been visible at all, but some things she didn’t feel the need to hold back when she was with him.

Beyond the grisly comparison, she knew exactly what he meant; it was an echo of her own history. That mission had made her question, if only for a second, what exactly she was made for.

She’d come to the conclusion about Clint long before that, though. At first her aim had been to seduce him — it wouldn’t have been hard, considering the professional admiration she had for him — but then Dmitry had left her for dead, and she found herself facing the first choice she could ever remember making for herself.

Things were different after that. There had been a lot of evaluation, some of it at his hands, some at Coulson’s, some at Fury’s, a lot of it in medical. And somewhere along the line she realised she’d defined the word comfort by the way he sat across from her on the sofa, his feet tucked behind the small of her back as he stretched out in companionable silence.

“It’s not silly,” she assured him, her tone deadly serious. It’s what had saved her, after all. Dangerous, impractical, and in her case, unattainable… but not silly.

Clint made a non-committal noise at the assertion. He didn’t expect placations from Natasha, nor would he want them. Life was what it was and saying otherwise was just one more lie that Clint didn’t need.

Words had never meant much to Clint, after all. Foundations and definitions had been built by the sum of actions and to this day the essence of a person remained what they had done rather than what they had said. There was a certain amount of emotional fallout from defining the world that way, Clint knew that. It was, perhaps, why poetry had never made sense.

But if S.H.I.E.L.D. could be credited with giving him one thing it was the ability to understand that words weren’t always something cheap. There was an art in the power of words, to be sure. Clint had seen interrogators in action too many times to think otherwise now.

And there was no mistake their lives rested on keeping power. Fieldwork predicated a certain amount of fortitude one needed to have. Often the best agents were the ones who could divide themselves into pieces and play only the ones needed.

Yet what Coulson had taught him and Natasha had reinforced was the fact that words didn’t always mean needing to harden and tighten and break off a piece to let them slip through. Phil was the way he was, and that was what Clint liked about him. But there wouldn’t be anything more than there already was.

With a breath in he closed his eyes. “‘s why I never said…”

Tasha draped her knees over his lap, as comfortable as she could be when she wasn’t alone. She understood exactly why Clint had fallen for the man; if she’d been a sentimental woman, she might’ve been in the same position herself.

As it was, she was too smart to let sentiment decide anything for her again. She knew how it ended, knew what she was capable of and what she wasn’t, knew what life meant alongside the Black Widow, and she was unwilling to put anyone else through that. So as much as she could see why Clint loved him, she didn’t have anything to say that could make either of their paths easier.

She slotted her fingers with his to stop their movement, recognising distracted motion when she saw it.

“I’m not going anywhere, Clint.” She tilted her head minutely, amending her statement just a little because both of their lives meant that they couldn’t keep that promise to the letter. “Never for long, anyway.”

It wasn’t so much that she was a person who needed to verbally express herself so much as the fact that he obviously needed it said. He was her partner, and picking up the pieces is what she did, whether on the field or, far less masterfully, off it.

And though he didn't put much stock in most, he knew the gravity of Tasha’s words, and it was why he believed them.

“I know,” he acknowledged quietly. His hand squeezed tightly, as if hanging on, just for a moment, to one solid truth amongst everything else.

There were things he could say. That someone else probably would have said. And perhaps Clint was a sentimental man in the fact that he moved to kiss the corner of her mouth. Soft and sweet but chaste.

It was a matter of pride that she didn’t turn her lips under his kiss. She had in the past, too many times. But this time she was content to take it as the comfort that it was, to spare him the mess of that mistake, even if she thought for a moment about making it.

But there were enough things to hate herself for without it.

“‘fraid you’re stuck with me, Tasha.” And perhaps it was a bit sad, because she deserved so much more than him.

But he said nothing else, knowing that there were no words that would make anything different than what it was. So he let the engines hum for a long while, accepting the comfort given and letting his hand stay still within Natasha’s.

“Only ‘cause you were stuck with me first, hotshot.”

He huffed softly at that, almost a laugh, weighed down by the residual taste of disappointment in his mouth. It was a depressingly familiar heaviness on his tongue and for a moment he considered seeking means to distract himself.

Once upon a time he would have asked. Now, however, he couldn’t do that to her. Not when they both knew where it led. Not when the heaviness of earlier still permeated the air and colored intentions.

And, in all honesty, he wasn’t sure if he could handle another failure right now.

There were a million other things she could taste but would never say, and they sat in companionable silence for a long time, the cheek not resting on Clint’s shoulder steadily picking up a constant throb. Clint let the moment go, swallowing away the bitterness of possibility and feeling it slide down into his stomach, something to be dealt with later, if at all. For now, he steadied himself against the pull of regret with a hand on Tasha’s waist, drawing strength from her warm form next to him. Despite that fact, she managed to fall into a tentative sleep in the narrow bunk, the solid presence of Clint more than enough to keep her warm. He stayed still, feeling Tasha’s breathing fall into sleep, letting the soft in and out of her breath on his neck help keep the worries that came in the night at bay.

* * * * *

Natasha woke to the slight pitch that signaled descent.

“Clint -“

She whipped her head around, the overworked muscles protesting, and relaxed when he was still there, seemingly unaffected by her violent start. That fact should have stopped surprising her long ago, after that first terrifying morning in her S.H.I.E.L.D. quarters, but it never had. She allowed herself a moment to let the adrenaline spike seep from her limbs, smiling gently back at him as she shifted, the smile immediately turning into a wince as her checked cheek protested sharply. A quick string of curses dropped from her lips as she realised that wasn’t the only hurt protesting, but at least the curses were in English this time.

“Going to have to meet debrief soon. Medical first, if we’re unlucky.”

Clint hadn’t realized he’d dozed off until Natasha woke. His name was enough to squint his eyes against the dusky light of the sleep quarters, though he’d long since stopped reacting to startled wake ups. With Natasha, it was better to lie still rather than starting back. He’d learned that the hard way long ago and it wasn’t a lesson you forgot easily.

Instead he gave her a lazy smile and pretended that his hand wasn’t feeling about on par with Natasha’s mouth.

“Depends on who’s there.” With Fury or Hill they might get away with skipping medical. Sitwell was harder to sweet talk though Tasha had a particular penchant for managing it. Coulson, well, that was another beast all together.

Feeling his stomach roil a bit at the ill-fated topic again Clint pushed it aside to gingerly sit up on an elbow. His limbs were heavy from disuse and his arms were threatening to lock. From the seconds it took Tasha to neatly extract herself from the narrow cot he knew she was feeling similar.

Tasha missed his warmth immediately. But people talked, especially junior agents, and it would be easier if they reported separately.

Carefully, she pulled on a S.H.I.E.L.D. sweatshirt, trauma dropping her body temperature, and looked back at him, still sprawled over the thin cot. Even now, there were things unsaid that would remain that way, not because Clint Barton was the only man to ever make a coward out of her, but because he had been through enough.

Not to mention she was the very last person in the world who should be doling out advice on relationships.

For half a moment he even considered asking, the words dying before they left his lips. There was no use acknowledging it when they were both getting ready to deny it.

He did meet her eyes, however, and for a moment they considered the other, considered what to say. Apologies rose and died in his throat and Clint wondered if their death was because he was a coward or because he knew they wouldn’t change a thing.

“I’ll see you topside,” is what she settled on, and slipped out of the barracks before he could reply.

He was grateful when she let the moment go by and with the door closing he let himself fall back onto the cot with a soft thud. His good hand settled over his eyes and he sighed into the empty space.

“Clint Barton, what have you got yourself into this time?”

There was no answer though except for the whine of landing gear extending and the soft thud of his heartbeat, and that, perhaps, was answer enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking it out this long! xx


End file.
